HIRffUmiUl 


HlilHIIIIIHIlll 


HTT3 
XLi 

« .,_,*«(  *ir"V**i>ff 

t  i-^WfS 


^^b    «»^^Ti: ' 

LJ  /r«J       \ 

JL     JL  i,Jl      a 

I  LI1 

/-  T^i  T~> 

•£    .  T-,'4.  ,^L  iil....^ 


rnvHimUmrraK 


' 


UNIVERSITY 

OF  CALIFORNIA 

LOS  ANGELES 


SCHOOL  OF  LAW 
LIBRARY 


•NT 


THE  PACKERS 

THE  PRIVATE-CAR  LINES 

AND  THE   PEOPLE 


PHILIP   D.  ARMOUR 


PACKERS 
THE  PRIVATE  CAR  LINES 
AND  THE  PEOPLE 


BY 

J.  OGDEN  ARMOUR 

•*  n< 


ILLUSTRATED 


PHILADELPHIA 
HENRY  ALTEMUS  COMPANY 


Copyright,   1906 
By  HENRY  ALTKMUS 


Published,  June,   1906 


FOREWORD 

THE  writing  of  the  articles  which  have 
appeared  in  the  Saturday  Evening 
Post,  and  which  forms  the  basis  of 
this  book,  was  undertaken  with  great  reluc- 
tance. First,  because  of  an  entire  lack  of 
any  disposition  to  thrust  my  views  regard- 
ing any  subject  upon  the  public;  second, 
because  I  was  equally  undisposed  to  assume 
to  speak  for  anybody  but  myself.  On  the 
other  hand,  I  could  not  deny  the  existence 
in  the  public  mind  of  a  feeling  that  the 
traditional  corporation  policy  of  silence 
under  attack  is  sometimes  a  tacit  confession 
to  the  truthfulness  of  the  charges  brought 
about  by  hostile  and  mistaken  agitators. 

Finding  myself  the  responsible  head  of  a 

business  founded  by  a  father  who  had  put 

into  its  upbuilding  the  best  energies  of  a 

long,  active  life  and  a  very  considerable 

v 


FOREWORD 

genius  for  affairs,  I  found  it  increasingly 
difficult  to  keep  silent  under  a  long  series 
of  onslaughts  by  the  professional  agitators 
of  the  country,  knowing  those  attacks  to  be 
unfair,  unjust,  untrue,  and  in  most  cases 
maliciously  bitter.  When  at  last  this  con- 
dition forced  upon  me  the  conviction  that 
I  must  depart  from  all  traditions  and  cus- 
toms of  corporation  practice  and  speak  out 
plainly,  I  realized  more  keenly  than  ever 
how  much  more  appropriately  such  an 
appeal  to  the  common  sense  of  the  Amer- 
ican people  would  be  if  made  by  my  father 
or  by  some  other  of  the  little  group  of  vet- 
eran packers  who  pioneered  the  industry. 
However,  this  being  impossible,  I  put  aside 
my  own  unwillingness,  belioving  such  a 
course  to  be  dictated  by  my  duty  to  the 
interests  directly  entrusted  to  my  care,  to 
the  packing  and  private-car  line  industries 
in  general,  and  finally  to  the  American 
people. 

The  only  color  of  propriety  in  my  taking 
vi 


up  this  unwilling  work  was  to  be  had,  it 
seemed  to  me,  from  the  fact  that  the  agita- 
tors in  general,  and  the  yellow  magazines  in 
particular,  had  selected  the  Armour  house 
as  their  special  point  of  attack  as  the  type 
of  all  that  they  held  to  be  objectionable. 
For  this  reason,  and  not  because  the  heads 
of  other  packing  and  car  line  establishments 
could  not  better  present  the  case  of  their 
industries,  I  have  assumed  the  respon- 
sibility of  attempting  to  present  to  the  pub- 
lic of  this  country  the  falsity  of  the  state- 
ments made  by  the  sensation-mongers  of 
the  country  who,  for  their  own  selfish  pur- 
poses, have  singled  out  the  packing  and  the 
car  line  industries  for  a  campaign  of  slan- 
der, abuse,  and  misrepresentation  without 
precedent. 

Let  me  disclaim  at  the  start  all  superior 
motives,  and  admit  that  I  am  inspired  by 
that  kind  and  degree  of  selfishness  which 
moves  any  man  to  protect  his  own,  to  be 
loyal  to  his  responsibilities  and  to  hit  out 
vii 


FOREWORD 

against  assailants  who  come  at  him  with 
tactics  that  would  not  be  tolerated  in  the 
prize-ring,  on  the  foot-ball  field,  or  in  any 
form  of  contest  where  a  fair  fight  is  the 
accepted  and  enforced  standard. 


Vlll 


CONTENTS 


CHAPTER  I  PAGE 

THE  EVOLUTION  OF  THE  PRIVATE  FREIGHT  CAR  15 

CHAPTER  II 
THE  QUALITY  OF  THE  SERVICE 42 

CHAPTER  III 
MAGAZINE  vs.  ACTUAL  PROFIT 67 

CHAPTER  IV 
WHAT  THE  PRIVATE-CAR  LINE  HAS  DONE  .    .    90 

CHAPTER  V 
THE  PACKERS  AND  THE  CATTLEMEN 110 

CHAPTER  VI 
A  CAMPAIGN  OF  SLANDER 126 

CHAPTER  VII 
CATTLE  AND  CATTLE  MARKETS  .......  142 

ix 


x  CONTENTS 

CHAPTER  VIII 
PUBLIC  PREJUDICE  INEVITABLE 162 

CHAPTER  IX 

ANOTHER  CONTRIBUTION  TO  PROGRESS  ....  185 

CHAPTER  X 
ONCE  MORE  THE  PRIVATE-CAR  LINE 210 

CHAPTER  XI 

.  244 
JUGGLING  THE  FACTS 

CHAPTER  XII 

276 
THEORY  vs.  CONDITION-  .   .   - 

CHAPTER  XIII 

284 
As  TO  EXPERT  BUSINESS  .... 

CHAPTER  XIV 

00  K 

THE  GROWTH  OF  PORK  PACKING  .... 

CHAPTER  XV 

As  TO  CLEANLINESS  AND  SANITATION 358 


ILLUSTRATIONS 


PAGE 

PHILIP  D.  ARMOUR Frontispiece 

LOADING  TRACK  AND  ICING  PLATFORM,  NOR- 
FOLK, VA Facing  Page    48 

A  BUNCH    OF   STEERS    FOR  ARMOUR  &  COM- 
PANY'S PACKING  HOUSE,  CHICAGO,  ILL., 

Facing  Page  116 

BIRDS '-EYE  VIEW  OF  ARMOUR  &  COMPANY'S 
PLANT,  UNION  STOCK  YARDS,  CHICAGO,  ILL., 

Facing  Page  192 

PUTTING  UP  MEAT  EXTRACTS,  ARMOUR  &  COM- 
PANY'S PLANT,  CHICAGO,  ILL.,  Facing  Page  204 

FINISHING    AND    TESTING    CANS,  ARMOUR  & 
COMPANY'S  PLANT,  CHICAGO,  ILL.  , 

Facing  Page  288 

ENTRANCE    TO    THE    UNION    STOCK     YARDS, 
CHICAGO,  ILL Facing  Page  362 

GOVERNMENT       MICROSCOPICAL      INSPECTION, 
UNION  STOCK  YARDS,  CHICAGO,  ILL., 

Facing  Page  368 
xi 


THE  PACKERS 

THE  PRIVATE-CAR  LINES 

AND  THE   PEOPLE 


THE  PACKERS 

THE  PRIVATE  CAR  LINES 

AND  THE  PEOPLE 


A  CLEAR  and  fair  understanding  of 
the  private  freight-car  problem  is 
wholly  impossible  without  some 
knowledge  of  why  and  how  the  private  car 
came  into  existence  and  how  the  system  has 
been  developed  to  its  present  proportions. 
Equally  important  to  a  right  conclusion  in 
this  matter  is  a  knowledge  of  the  source  and 
the  animus  of  the  present  agitation,  the 
avowed  purpose  of  which  is  to  put  the 
private  car  out  of  business.  Unless  these 
things  are  clearly  set  forth  the  meat  of  the 
whole  contention  is  missed. 

But  before  I  attempt  to  present  these 
15 


THE   PACKERS,   THE  PRIVATE 

essential  facts  let  me  say  that  I  believe  in 
the  fairness  of  the  American  people,  and 
that  when  once  they  get  a  clear  understand- 
ing of  a  canse  they  will  render  a  righteous 
judgment.     President  Roosevelt  has  put 
the  disposition  of  this  people  most  descrip- 
tively in  declaring  that  they  are  "for  a 
square  deal."  It  is  because  I  believe  this  so 
profoundly  that  I  make  the  statements  con- 
tained in  this  book.    Any  man  who  has  a 
just  cause  need  not,  I  believe,  fear  to  appeal 
to  the  American  people  when  he  can  be  sure 
of  reaching  practically  the  whole  people 
direct,  and  is  also  assured  that  he  is  not,  in 
stating  his  case,  liable  to  be  misquoted  or  in 
any  manner  misrepresented. 

The  storm-centre  of  the  present  contro- 
versy is  the  private  fruit  and  produce-car; 
consequently  this  must  for  the  moment 
command  the  greater  attention.  The  fact 
remains,  however,  that  the  meat-car  was 
the  pioneer  in  the  private  field,  and  that 
the  fruit-car  was  a  direct  evolution  from  it. 
16 


CAR  LINES  AND   THE   PEOPLE 

It  has  always  seemed  to  me  that  the  very 
manner  in  which  the  private  car  came  into 
being  is  enough  clearly  to  justify  its  ex- 
istence in  the  mind  of  any  fairly-disposed 
man  of  affairs. 

In  the  old  days  cattle  were  moved  from 
the  Middle  West  to  the  East  alive  and  on 
the  hoof.  This  movement  from  the  prairies, 
where  the  cattle  could  be  most  cheaply 
grown,  to  the  centres  of  population  in  a 
part  of  the  country  ill-adapted  to  grazing, 
but  where  the  demand  for  the  meat  was  the 
strongest,  was  found  to  be  very  expensive, 
inland  transportation  then  being  both  poor 
and  costly.  A  steer  weighing  one  thousand 
pounds  would  dress  five  hundred  and  fifty 
pounds.  This  is  only  another  way  of  say- 
ing that  shipping  on  the  hoof  meant  paying 
high  freight  charges  on  four  hundred  and 
fifty  pounds  of  what  was  then  practically 
all  waste  material,  and  quite  a  large  por- 
tion of  the  five  hundred  and  fifty  pounds 
2  17 


THE   PACKERS,   THE,  PRIVATE 

of  dressed  meat  also  consisted  of  bone  and 
other  waste  matter  that  could  not  be  eaten. 
Of  course,  dressed  meat  could  be  shipped 
for  a  limited  distance  in  freezing  weather, 
but  always  with  great  risk,  transportation 
then  being  slow,  crude  and  uncertain.  Dur- 
ing the  warmer  months  traffic  in  dressed 
meats  was  therefore  confined  to  the  local 
field. 

Under  these  conditions  it  did  not  require 
any  marvelous  amount  of  acumen  to  see 
that  the  business  could  not  be  expanded 
beyond  the  local  field,  as  far  as  the  warmer 
months  were  concerned,  unless  some  ade- 
quate means  of  protecting  the  meat  against 
the  effects  of  high  temperature  while  in 
transit  and  until  sold  could  be  devised. 
Probably  it  is  fair  to  say  that  the  packers 
would  have  been  decidedly  obtuse  if  they 
had  failed  to  see  that  the  salvation  and  ex- 
pansion of  their  business  was  locked  up  in 
the  then  undiscovered  secret  of  how  to  ship 
dressed  meats  under  some  kind  of  cooling 
18 


CAB  LINES  AND   THE   PEOPLE 

process  that  could  be  depended  upon  to 
keep  them  in  good  condition,  and  that 
should  not  be  too  expensive. 

On  the  one  hand,  in  the  prairies  of  the 
West  was  the  natural  basis  for  almost  un- 
limited expansion  in  the  growing  of  cattle 
at  the  minimum  of  cost ;  on  the  other  hand, 
the  cities  and  the  more  thickly-settled  sec- 
tions of  the  East  and  South  were  calling  for 
this  meat  from  the  prairies.  The  expense 
of  shipping  cattle  from  the  West  to  the 
East  was  practically  prohibitive  so  far  as 
the  natural  growth  of  the  cattle  industry 
was  concerned.  The  hour  had  struck  for 
that  great  economic  and  industrial  step, 
the  appearance  of  the  first  crude  meat  re- 
frigerator-car. 

Properly  speaking  it  was  not  a  refriger- 
ator-car at  all;  simply  a  big  ice-box  on 
wheels  with  the  cargo  of  meat  heaped  upon 
the  ice  and  coming  directly  in  contact  with 
it.  Mr.  Hammond,  then  of  Detroit,  is 
believed  to  have  made  the  first  fairly  suc- 
19 


THE    PACKERS,  THE   PRIVATE 

cessf ul  experiment  in  the  building  of  a  meat 
refrigerator-car,  in  1871.     Although    sta- 
tionary refrigerators  were  at  that  time  in 
limited  use,  the  facilities  of  the  average 
eastern   butcher   or   retailer   for  keeping 
meats  were  poor,  and  the  western  killers 
had,  of  course,  no  branch  houses  or  dis- 
tributing stations.    The  meat  which  came 
in  contact  with  the  ice  became  discolored 
and  spoiled  quickly  when  taken  off  and  sub- 
jected to  the  inadequate  refrigeration  then 
almost  universal.    To  remedy  this  difficulty 
cars  were  so  equipped  that  the  meat  could 
be  suspended  from  the  rafters  and  ceiling, 
with  the  result  that  when  the  car  was  in 
motion  and  going  around  curves  the  halves 
of  meat  were  set  swinging  like  pendulums 
and  finally  communicated  their  motion  to 
the  car.     Several  wrecks  occurred  which 
were  attributed  to  this  cause,  and  the  hos- 
tility of  the  railroads  was  awakened. 

The  next  step  in  this  evolutionary  proc- 
ess was  that  of  partitioning  off  one  end  of 
20 


CAR  LINES  AND  THE  PEOPLE 

the  car  into  an  ice-bin,  or  bunker,  the  meat 
being  suspended  in  the  body  of  the  car  in 
a  proper  manner.  This  was  a  decided  im- 
provement, and  the  meat  carried  in  these 
cars  arrived  in  better  condition.  However, 
the  true  principle  of  car  refrigeration 
eluded  the  experimenters  for  several  years, 
but  finally  one  of  them  hit  it  squarely  and 
brought  out  the  fact  that  a  draft  of  air 
passing  through  a  bunker,  or  ice-chest,  in 
the  upper  corner  of  a  car  becomes  chilled, 
so  that  it  is  heavier  than  the  air  which  it 
meets,  and  consequently  it  drops  down,  cir- 
culating through  the  car,  and  finally,  after 
it  has  lost  its  chill  and  becomes  lighter  than 
the  incoming  current,  rises  and  passes  out 
of  the  ventilator.  Thus  a  current  of  fresh 
chilled  air  is  constantly  circulating  about 
the  meat,  which  is  securely  racked  and  does 
not  touch  the  ice  at  all. 

About  the  time  this  principle  of  car  re- 
frigeration   was    clearly    established    my 
father  recognized  its  permanence  and  its 
21 


THE    PACKERS,  THE    PRIVATE 

relation  to  the  future  of  the  meat  business. 
He    saw    that    the    meat    refrigerator-car 
hitched  the  packing  business  to  the  growth 
of  this  country,  that  it  annexed  to  the  west- 
ern ranges  and  prairie  pastures  the  thickly- 
populated  manufacturing  and  commercial 
centres  of  the  East.    Perhaps  the   other 
packers  saw  this  as  clearly  as  he  did;  cer- 
tainly they  were  all  interested  in  the  de- 
velopment of  the  refrigerator-car.     But  he 
was  tremendously  in  earnest  in  this  matter, 
and  went  to  the  management  of  the  rail- 
roads over  which  he  would  naturally  ship 
the  most  meat  and  asked  for  the  building  of 
a  small  number  of  these  cars.    He  was  very 
promptly  informed  that  this  could  not  be 
done,  that  the  demands  for  expenditures 
in  the  ordinary  avenues  were  too  great  to 
justify  going  into  a  side  issue  of  this  kind. 
This  brought  him  face  to  face  with  an 
emergency  of  almost  critical  importance. 
He  saw  that  refrigerator-cars  for  the  ship- 
ment of  dressed  meats  were  an  absolute 
22 


CAE  LINES  AND  THE  PEOPLE 

necessity,  that  their  hour  had  arrived,  and 
that  the  packer  who  did  not  recognize 
as  inevitable  this  great  change  in  the  in- 
dustry and  make  the  most  of  it  would  drop 
behind  in  the  irresistible  movement  of 
events. 

On  the  other  hand,  his  own  business  was, 
like  that  of  the  railroads,  growing  faster 
than  his  capital ;  he  had  hard  work  to  keep 
up  with  it  and  needed  more  money  in  the 
routine  expansion  of  the  industry  than  he 
could  command,  without  putting  thousands 
of  dollars  into  cars  of  the  most  expensive 
kind.  All  the  vigor  with  which  he  could 
urge  his  case,  his  confidence  in  the  great 
volume  of  business  to  be  developed  by  the 
meat  refrigerator-car,  failed  to  move  the 
railroad  managers  to  whom  he  appealed, 
and  he  finally  found  himself  absolutely 
forced  as  a  matter  of  self -protection  to  the 
building  of  the  first  private  car  of  the 
Armour  system.  To  do  this  was  then  a  de- 
cided hardship,  an  alternative  which  he 
23 


THE   PACKERS,   THE   PRIVATE 

adopted  only  because  he  saw  it  to  be  a 
matter  of  the  sternest  necessity.  At  that 
time  the  cars  cost  something  more  than 
twelve  hundred  dollars  each,  and  because 
of  the  demand  which  he  felt  for  money  in 
the  regular  channels  of  his  growing  busi- 
ness he  could  build  only  a  small  portion  of 
the  cars  which  he  really  needed. 

The  meat  refrigerator-car  accomplished 
all  that  my  father  expected  and  more.  In- 
dustrially it  influenced  the  most  important 
economic  development  of  the  packing  busi- 
ness— the  utilization  of  waste  material  in 
the  manufacture  of  by-products.  What 
this  phase  of  the  industry  means  to  the  peo- 
ple of  the  United  States  and  to  the  packers 
I  shall  tell  further  on;  but  it  is  merely 
suggested  in  the  statement  that  by  its 
economies  the  packers  are  able  to  ship  meat 
into  thousands  of  localities  remote  from  the 
great  source  of  supply  in  the  West  and  sell 
a  superior  "cut"  at  a  lower  price  than  the 
butcher  can  sell  an  inferior  "cut"  taken 
24 


CAB  LINES  AND  THE  PEOPLE 

from  a  home-grown  meat  animal  killed  in 
his  own  slaughter-house. 

But  the  refrigerator-car  was  destined  to 
do  more  than  revolutionize  the  meat  indus- 
try. It  was  to  place  upon  the  tables  of  the 
people  in  cities  and  towns  delicate  and  de- 
licious fruits,  berries,  and  vegetables  grown 
in  remote  localities,  as  it  had  already 
brought  to  them  the  fresh  meats  from 
the  prairies  and  ranges.  Very  early  in 
the  history  of  the  meat  refrigerator-car 
my  father,  who  had  been  a  farmer-boy  in 
the  fruit  belt  of  New  York  state,  became 
thoroughly  convinced  that  refrigeration 
was  the  magic  that  would  work  as  great  a 
liberation  and  expansion  for  the  fruit  busi- 
ness as  it  had  for  the  cattle  industry. 

After  watching  the  results  of  experi- 
ments in  shipping  California  fruits  in 
ordinary  meat  refrigerator-cars  he  became 
so  enthusiastic  in  his  belief  in  what  re- 
frigeration would  do  in  the  handling  of 
fruits  that  he  called  Mr.  George  B.  Bobbins 
25 


THE    PACKERS,  THE    PRIVATE 

(now  president  of  the  Armour  Car  Lines) 
into  his  office,  discussed  various  points  of 
difference  in  the  requirements  of  a  re- 
frigerator-car adapted  to  carrying  fruits 
and  one  for  the  shipping  of  meats,  and 
finally  said : 

"Embody  all  these  ideas  in  a  plan  and 
then  place  an  order  for  the  building  of  one 
thousand  of  the  cars. ' ' 

"But,"  cautiously  suggested  Mr.  Rob- 
bins,  "where  are  we  going  to  get  the  busi- 
ness for  so  many  cars  f ' ' 

"Build  them!"  exclaimed  my  father  in 
his  hearty  and  decisive  way.  "I'll  pay  for 
'em;  then  you  do  your  best  to  run  them 
right." 

While  the  cars  were  being  built  men  were 
sent  out  into  the  fruit-growing  sections  to 
hustle  for  business.  When  the  growers  of 
a  district  were  first  solicited  to  ship  their 
fruits  in  a  refrigerator-car  they  scouted 
the  idea  and  declared  that  the  fruit  would 
be  frosted  and  spoiled.  In  their  minds  re- 
26 


CAB  LINES  AND  THE   PEOPLE 

frigeration  and  freezing  were  synonymous, 
so  far  as  the  handling  of  fruits  was  con- 
cerned. Through  sensible  arguments  and 
the  testimony  of  growers  who  had  once 
tried  the  experiment,  sufficient  business  was 
secured  to  employ  the  new  cars  as  they 
came  out  of  the  shops. 

About  this  time  my  father  took  an  ex- 
tensive trip  through  the  South  and  came 
back  filled  with  the  idea  that  it  held  won- 
derful possibilities  for  fruit-growers.  At 
once  he  sent  out  a  force  of  missionaries  to 
see  if  the  facts  to  be  gained  by  a  careful 
and  scientific  investigation  would  confirm 
this  opinion.  When  the  reports  of  these 
men  came  in  he  ordered  another  thousand 
fruit  refrigerator-cars  from  the  shops. 
These  missionaries  came  into  closest  con- 
tact with  the  people  and  almost  literally 
helped  to  plant  and  start  one  after  another 
of  the  now  famous  fruit  and  berry  districts 
of  the  South.  These  soon  made  themselves 
27 


THE   PACKERS,   THE   PRIVATE 

felt,  and  the  third  thousand  of  cars  was 
soon  under  construction. 

At  length  the  pinch  of  hard  times  began 
to  be  felt  throughout  the  country,  and  Mr. 
Mysenburg,  of  the  Wells  &  French  Car 
Works,  confessed  that  if  unexpected  orders 
were  not  secured  a  shut-down  seemed 
inevitable.  My  father  immediately  placed 
an  order  for  two  thousand  more  fruit-cars 
and  advanced  the  money  for  their  construc- 
tion. From  this  time  on  he  had  a  continued 
and  increasing  interest  in  the  development 
of  the  fruit  industry— a  personal  interest  in 
the  industry  itself  over  and  above  that 
which  he  felt  in  the  refrigeration  business 
and  its  profits. 

The  growing  of  fruits  and  berries  has 
been  developed  from  the  plane  of  compara- 
tively an  inconsequential  avocation  to  the 
dignity  of  an  immense  industry.  The  num- 
ber of  private  fruit  refrigerator-cars  in  the 
Armour  Lines  has  increased  to  twelve  thou- 
sand. The  operation  of  the  private  fruit 
28 


CAB  LINES  AND  THE   PEOPLE 

refrigerator-car  has  changed  the  growing 
of  fruits  and  berries  from  a  gamble  to  a 
business,  from  a  local  incident  to  a  national 
industry,  bringing  millions  of  dollars  annu- 
ally to  districts  where  land  was  worth  only 
two  to  ten  dollars  an  acre  before  the  general 
distribution  of  fruit  was  made  possible  by 
this  agency. 

It  is  quite  natural,  then,  that  the  lay 
reader  should  ask:  If  the  private  car  has 
done  all  this  for  the  grower  of  fruit,  why  all 
this  outcry  from  the  fruit  men  against  the 
private  car?  I  am  glad  to  have  the  ques- 
tion raised,  for  the  people,  as  a  whole,  do 
not  know  the  truth  of  the  matter ;  it  is  time 
they  did,  for  they  will  be  fair  as  soon  as 
they  see  the  real  situation  fairly.  Their 
present  views  are  based  on  misinformation 
and  malicious  misrepresentations  by  those 
who  have  an  axe  to  grind,  but  who  do  not 
care  to  come  into  the  open  to  do  it. 

The  fact  of  the  matter  is  that  this  whole 
agitation  started  with  the  commission  men 
29 


THE   PACKERS,   THE   PEIVATE 

of  the  country  and  not  with  the  growers; 
these  middlemen  are  the  manipulators  of 
the  campaign  that  is  being  prosecuted  for 
the  express  purpose  of  putting  the  private- 
car  lines  out  of  business.  With  Washing- 
ton, D.  C.,  as  a  centre,  these  commission 
men  are  pushing  an  extensive  propaganda 
based  on  the  cry  that  the  grower  is  being 
oppressed  by  the  private-car  lines,  and  that 
this  is  the  grower 's  fight  for  a  chance  to  do 
business  at  a  profit.  All  of  the  cunning  at 
the  command  of  these  men  is  focused  on  the 
one  purpose  of  spreading  everywhere  the 
impression  that  the  private  car  is  an 
" octopus'*  that  is  strangling  the  fruit- 
growing industry. 

What  are  the  facts  in  the  case?  The 
growers  are  satisfied  with  the  private  car, 
with  its  service,  and  with  the  system,  which 
they  recognize  has  been  the  biggest  factor 
in  building  their  business  to  its  present 
proportion  and  stability  and  in  opening  to 
them  the  markets  of  the  entire  country. 
30 


CAR  LINES  AND  THE  PEOPLE 

This,  I  repeat,  is  not  the  fight  of  the  grow- 
ers, but  of  the  commission  men.  The  real 
attitude  of  the  growers  toward  the  private 
car  was  cleverly  expressed  in  a  speech  by  a 
representative  of  the  Georgia  Fruit-Grow- 
ers' Association,  who  publicly  declared: 

"We  have  trained  and  chained  the 
octopus  so  that  it  will  feed  out  of  our  hands. 
The  only  thing  we  are  afraid  of  is  that  this 
pounding  of  the  refrigerator  service  by  the 
commission  merchant  interests  will  cause 
the  octopus  to  break  its  chains,  jump  the 
fence,  and  leave  us,  as  in  former  times,  with 
no  octopus  but  with  all  our  peaches!" 

This  is  the  sentiment  of  the  growers 
everywhere.  I  do  not  believe  there  is  one 
exclusive  grower  in  this  country  who  does 
not  recognize  that  the  private  refrigerator- 
car  is  the  salvation  of  and  the  mainstay  of 
his  business  and  absolutely  vital  to  its  pros- 
perity and  expansion.  Also  I  as  firmly  be- 
lieve that  there  is  not  one  large  grower  in 
the  country,  having  no  interest  in  the  fruit 
31 


THE   PACKERS,   THE   PRIVATE 

commission  business,  who  does  not  clearly 
recognize  that  the  private-car  line,  operat- 
ing on  the  principle  of  the  exclusive  con- 
tract, is  the  only  practical  plan  of  handling 
fruit  refrigeration,  and  that  it  gives  the 
shipper  a  quality  and  reliability  of  service 
impossible  under  any  other  scheme  of  oper- 
ation. Scores  of  fruit-growers'  associa- 
tions and  hundreds  of  individual  growers 
have  given  public  testimony  to  that  effect, 
and  hundreds  of  pages  of  such  testimony 
have  been  given  in  the  form  of  legal  evi- 
dence under  oath. 

Why,  then,  are  the  commission  men  so 
interested  in  putting  the  private  refriger- 
ator-car lines  out  of  business?  Because  the 
private  car  has  been  steadily  and  irresist- 
ibly liberating  the  grower  from  the  clutches 
of  the  commission  man ;  because  the  private 
fruit  refrigerator-car  has  compelled  the 
commission  man  to  quit  doing  business 
upon  the  capital  of  the  growers  and  forced 
him  to  become  an  actual  buyer  and  a 
32 


CAR  LINES  AND   THE   PEOPLE 

merchant  in  fact.  Under  the  old  condi- 
tions of  shipping  fruit  and  berries  the 
growers  were  absolutely  at  the  mercy  of  the 
commission  men.  Fruit  shipped  without 
proper  refrigeration  stood  a  good  chance  of 
arriving  in  a  more  or  less  damaged  con- 
dition, and  this  likelihood  was  the  strategic 
stock  in  trade  of  the  commission  men,  who 
were  not  slow  to  make  the  most  of  it. 

Many  reliable  growers  have  testified  that 
in  the  days  before  the  private  car  invaded 
their  territory  they  considered  themselves 
lucky  if  the  commission  merchant  did  not 
demand  a  check  from  them  to  make  up 
what  the  reported  net  results  from  the  sale 
of  their  fruit  fell  short  of  the  amount  of  the 
freight  charges  and  of  the  middleman's 
commission.  The  consignments  of  fruit 
acknowledged  by  the  consignees  to  have 
arrived  in  good  condition  were,  in  those 
days,  about  as  rare  as  honest  packers  are 
now  popularly  thought  to  be.  Or,  if  the 
grower's  shipment  was  not  reported  to  have 
3  33 


THE   PACKERS,   THE  PRIVATE 

arrived  in  damaged  condition,  he  was  likely 
to  be  told  that  the  market  was  glutted,  that 
the  finest  fruits  were  selling  for  what  the 
poorest  should  bring,  and  that  the  shipper 
would  do  well  if  he  did  not  have  to  send 
money  to  make  up  the  freight. 

Of  course,  it  is  true  that  without  modern 
refrigeration  great  quantities  of  fruit  did 
arrive  at  market  in  bad  condition,  and  that 
a  glutted  market  was  altogether  too  com- 
mon. But  this  situation  was  diligently  and 
assiduously  used  by  the  commission  mer- 
chants as  a  club  over  the  growers'  heads. 
A  thousand  pages  could  be  filled  with  the 
evidence  of  growers  who  have  suffered 
this  sort  of  thing. 

The  coming  of  the  private  fruit  refriger- 
ator-car into  a  district  put  an  end  to  this 
kind  of  tyranny.  It  carried  the  fruit  of  the 
growers  into  the  usual  market  in  precisely 
the  same  condition  in  which  it  left  the 
orchards.  There  was  no  dodging  this  fact ; 
it  was  so  clear  to  the  grower,  the  railroad 
34 


CAR  LINES  AND  THE  PEOPLE 

and  the  commission  man  that  it  was  beyond 
question  or  dispute.  That  did  away  with 
the  time-worn  excuse  of  the  commission 
man  that  the  shipment  was  received  in 
badly  damaged  condition.  The  backbone 
of  that  stock  claim  was  broken. 

By  the  same  token,  the  private  refriger- 
ator-car put  the  other  stock  excuse  of  a 
middleman  out  of  service.  The  glutted 
market  became  a  vanishing  quantity  under 
the  ability  of  the  private  fruit  refrigerator- 
car  to  take  its  cargo  in  prime  condition  to 
remote  as  well  as  near  markets.  In  a  word, 
not  only  did  the  private  fruit  refrigerator- 
car  multiply  the  markets  open  to  the  grower 
and  shipper,  and  insure  the  good  condition 
of  his  fruit  in  transit,  but  the  private-car 
system  permitted  him  to  divert  his  car  at 
will  and  while  in  transit  from  its  original 
destination  to  another  less  congested.  In 
short,  the  private  car  enabled  the  grower  to 
know  that  he  could  put  his  fruit  into  a  good 
market  in  good  condition. 
35 


THE   PACKERS,   THE  PRIVATE 

Now  these  changes  from  the  old  line-up 
completely  overturned  the  business  of  the 
commission  merchant.  The  grower  was  no 
longer  helpless  in  his  hands,  and  the  result 
was  that  the  middleman  had  to  get  out  and 
hustle  for  business;  he  had  to  go  to  the 
grower  and  treat  with  him  on  something 
like  a  fair  basis.  The  history  of  every  fruit 
district  in  which  the  private  refrigerator- 
car  has  operated  for  a  period  of  years 
shows  that  its  advent  was  followed  by  the 
buyers,  who  went  out  to  get  their  share  of 
the  crop  and  to  bid  against  each  other  in 
order  to  do  so. 

It  is  clearly  impossible  to  more  than 
touch  the  high  spots  in  a  controversy  of  the 
magnitude  of  that  which  has  thus  been 
stirred  up  about  the  private-car  lines — and 
to  do  so  in  merely  a  suggestive  way  at  that. 
So  far  I  have  attempted  little  more  than  an 
introduction  to  the  subject,  but  further  on 
I  shall  deal  in  detail  with  facts  and  con- 
ditions. 

36 


CAR  LINES  AND  THE   PEOPLE 

Several  of  the  most  important  phases  of 
this  fight  must  be  indicated  by  at  least  a 
passing  statement.  One  of  these  is  the 
matter  of  rebates.  The  propaganda  put 
out  by  the  men  who  have  set  themselves  the 
task  of  driving  the  private  car  off  the  tracks 
of  the  railroads  of  this  country  proclaims 
that  the  private  refrigerator-car  is  simply  a 
device  contrived  to  evade  the  law  forbid- 
ding the  giving  or  receiving  of  rebates. 
This  has  been  pounded  into  the  ears  of  the 
people  until,  broadly  speaking,  they  accept 
it  without  question. 

So  far  as  the  Armour  private  cars  are 
concerned,  natural  conditions,  the  force  of 
circumstances,  and  the  positive  refusal  of 
the  railroad  companies  to  put  any  money 
into  "new-fangled  refrigerator-cars"  sim- 
ply compelled  my  father  to  build  them  him- 
self. He  found  that  the  refrigerator-car 
worked  a  wonderful  expansion  in  the  meat 
industry,  and  thought  he  saw  that  he  could 
do  as  much  for  the  fruit  business.  He 
37 


THE   PACKERS,   THE   PRIVATE 

backed  his  faith  with  his  money,  and  pio- 
neered the  way  in  the  development  of  the 
fruit,  berry,  and  produce  industry. 

This  development  was  not  only  natural 
but  inevitable.  Accident  seemed  to  decree 
that  the  meat  and  fruit  refrigerator-car 
should  be  builded  by  private  enterprise,  and 
certain  industrial  laws  seemed  to  have 
further  decreed  that  the  private  car  should 
remain  in  private  hands,  and  that  its  pri- 
vate operation  and  control  give  a  far  better 
service  to  the  industries  which  employ  it 
than  could  a  refrigerator-car  owned  by  a 
railroad.  All  this  is  very  remote  from  a 
"device"  artificially  called  into  being  to 
dodge  the  rebate  law. 

In  fact,  the  Armour  private  car  is  not 
used  as  a  device  to  secure,  directly  or  in- 
directly, rebates,  discriminations,  or  con- 
cessions to  the  car  line  owning  it,  to  the 
shipper  using  it,  to  the  individuals— or  any 
one  of  them— owning  the  Armour  Car 
Lines,  or  to  any  individual  near  or  remotely 
38 


CAE  LINES  AND  THE  PEOPLE 

connected  with  the  industry.  It  was  de- 
termined when  the  prohibitive  law  against 
rebates  went  into  effect  it  was  to  be  obeyed 
and  not  evaded ;  that  a  policy  of  indirection 
and  evasion  was  a  poor  policy  from  any 
standpoint  and  would  not  be  countenanced 
by  the  Armour  interests. 

That  there  is  a  considerable  difference 
of  opinion  between  the  Interstate  Commerce 
Commission  and  the  railroads,  relating  to 
the  transportation  of  property  from  in- 
terior cities  of  the  United  States  upon  a 
through  tariff  over  railroads  and  steam- 
ships to  foreign  countries,  is  undeniable. 
The  situation  has  provoked  much  comment. 
However,  it  is  not  clearly  determined 
whether  the  matter  is  within  the  province 
of  the  Interstate  Commerce  Act  and  that  of 
the  Interstate  Commerce  Commission.  The 
fact  is  that  the  recent  indictment  of  railway 
and  packing  officials  at  Kansas  City  for 
alleged  rebating  relates  exclusively  to  ship- 
ments from  Kansas  City  to  Europe.  Speak- 
39 


THE    PACKERS,  THE    PRIVATE 

ing  for  my  own  company,  the  regular  es- 
tablished public  rates  have  been  paid  in 
full;  and  there  has  not  been  "any  rebate, 
concession,  or  discrimination"  of  any  char- 
acter to  shippers  in  this  relation. 

It  seems  to  me  that  an  "indictment"  is 
neither  the  fairest  nor  the  easiest  method  .; 
by  which  to  arrive  at  an  answer  as  to 
whether  the  railroads  are  required  to  file 
through  tariff  schedules  relating  to  foreign 
shipments  with  the  Interstate  Commerce 
Commission  or  not.  Shipments  of  other 
commodities,  as,  for  instance,  cotton,  so  I  am 
informed,  have  always  been  made  identi- 
cally the  same  as  the  meat  shipments  in- 
volved in  these  indictments  against  the  pack- 
ers, but  I  do  not  recall  any  action  being 
taken  against  the  shippers  of  cotton.  The 
manner  of  shipment  in  both  cases  has  been 
fully  understood  by  the  Interstate  Com- 
merce Commission;  there  has  been  no  con- 
cealment whatever  in  this  respect. 

This  is  purely  a  technical  matter,  a  law 
40 


CAR  LINES  AND  THE  PEOPLE 

point  which  the  Interstate  Commerce  Com- 
mission has  long  been  urged  to  determine — 
one  between  the  Interstate  Commerce  Com- 
mission and  the  railroads  on  jurisdictional 
grounds— whether  the  tariff  sheet  must  be 
filed  by  the  railroads  with  the  Commission 
*r— a  question  that  rightly  involves  neither 

sihe  packers  who  are  indicted  with  the  rail- 
^^ 

croads  nor  any  other  shippers  to  foreign 
t^narkets.  There  is  nothing  in  the  Kansas 
sCity  indictment  that  conflicts  with  mv  state- 

Lu 

^ment  in  the  preceding  paragraph. 

z     Another  element  in  the  situation  which 

«t 

pf  has  been  subjected  to  bitter  and  sensational 

0  attack  is  that  of  the  "exclusive  contract.'* 

flU 

3-  This  also  demands  careful   and  detailed 

1  . 

-a  treatment,  and  will  receive  it  later.    Of 
I  course,  this  feature  is  inseparably  associ- 
P   ated  with  that  of  the  reasonableness  of  the 
rate  charged. 


41 


THE   PACKERS,   THE   PRIVATE 
CHAPTER  II 

THE  QUALITY  OF  THE  SERVICE 

IT  should  be  explained,  for  the  benefit  of 
the  general  public,  that  the  service  for 
which  the  shipper  pays  the  private-car 
line  is  that  of  refrigeration  and  not  hauling. 
The  private-car  lines  take  care  of  the  fruit 
from  the  moment  it  enters  the  car  door 
until  it  arrives  at  its  destination;  it  has 
nothing  whatever  to  do  with  the  freight 
charges. 

Only  the  commonest  kind  of  selfish  com- 
mon sense  is  required  to  arrive  at  the  policy 
of  keeping  these  refrigeration  rates  down 
to  a  point  that  will  foster  the  fruit  and 
berry  industry  and  stimulate  it  to  the 
broadest  possible  expansion.  Any  line  of 
action  less  liberal  than  this  would  be  short- 
sighted and  suicidal.  This  is  the  policy 
that  has  steadily  been  pursued  by  the 
42 


CAE  LINES  AND  THE   PEOPLE 

Armour  Car  Lines,  and  no  doubt  by  their 
competitors.  The  assertion  that  the  rates 
charged  for  refrigeration  of  fruits  by  the 
Armour  Car  Lines  have  decreased  in  every 
district  in  which  it  has  operated  cannot  be 
controverted.  As  the  volume  of  business 
developed  has  increased,  the  rates  charged 
have  been  voluntarily  lowered.  For  ex- 
ample: When  five  different  car  lines  were 
competing  for  the  Georgia  peach  refrigera- 
tion business  the  rate  was  ninety  dollars  a 
car  to  New  York.  Afterward,  under  an 
exclusive  contract  with  the  Central  of 
Georgia  Railroad,  it  was  reduced  to  eighty 
dollars  a  car.  Again,  in  1901,  owing  to  an 
increase  in  the  volume  of  business,  and  a 
slight  decrease  in  the  cost  of  ice,  we  volun- 
tarily reduced  the  refrigeration  charges  to 
sixty-eight  dollars  and  seventy-five  cents. 

The   reductions   made   by   the   Armour 
Lines  in  the  refrigeration  fruit  rates  from 
California  since  1895  vary  from  twenty- 
seven    per    cent,    to    fifty-five    per    cent., 
43 


THE   PACKERS,   THE  PRIVATE 

according  to  kind,  loading-point,  and  des- 
tination. Everywhere  throughout  the  whole 
field  of  operation  the  same  consistent 
policy  of  reduction  has  been  in  force,  and 
this  has  been  brought  out  and  substantiated 
in  thousands  of  pages  of  evidence  taken 
before  the  Interstate  Commerce  Commis- 
sion, the  United  States  Congressional 
Committees,  and  the  other  bodies  which 
have  had  the  private-car  lines  on  the  grid- 
iron. The  attitude  of  the  grower  is  simply 
this: 

"We  want  lower  rates  if  we  can  get  them 
—but,  above  all  things,  let  nothing  be  done 
in  an  effort  to  get  them  that  will  interfere 
with  or  deprive  us  of  the  private-car-line 
service  as  it  now  stands,  for  we  're  prosper- 
ing and  growing  under  it  and  we  can't 
afford  to  have  it  jeopardized." 

When  it  comes  to  deciding  whether  re- 
frigeration rates  are  reasonable  or  unrea- 
sonable we  must  consider  the  quality  of  the 
service,  its  cost  to  those  furnishing  it,  and 
44 


CAB  LINES  AND  THE  PEOPLE 

the  hazards  and  liabilities  which  have  to  be 
shouldered  by  the  car  lines.  That  the 
service  is  indispensable  to  the  grower,  that 
he  has  paid  far  higher  rates  in  the  past 
than  he  now  pays,  and  that  his  business  has 
marvelously  expanded  under  these  rates,  I 
have  already  indicated. 

The  quality  of  the  service  is  so  high  that 
growers  are  of  one  voice  in  its  praise. 
Broadly  speaking,  they  have  no  complaints 
to  make  on  this  score.  Of  course  there  are 
individual  complaints,  but  these  are  so  in- 
significant as  compared  with  the  total  num- 
ber of  shippers  or  the  number  of  shippers 
who  have  put  themselves  on  record  as  de- 
lighted with  the  service  that  my  statement 
stands  without  qualification.  Here  is  one 
incident,  typical  of  scores  of  others  demon- 
strating the  growers'  appreciation  of  the 
quality  of  the  private-car  service : 

Benton  Harbor,  Michigan,  is  tapped  by 
three  railroads.  Two  of  these,  during  the 
peach  season  just  passed,  furnished  re- 
45 


THE   PACKERS,   THE   PRIVATE 

f  rigerator-cars  to  shippers  and  did  icing  at 
the  cost  for  ice  of  two  dollars  and  fifty 
cents  per  ton.  The  private-car  line  oper- 
ating over  the  other  road  charged  its 
regular  refrigeration  rates.  The  apparent 
difference  was  great;  but,  in  spite  of  this, 
sixty  per  cent,  of  the  peach  crop  of  that 
place  was  shipped  by  the  private-car  line, 
and  eighty  per  cent,  would  have  been 
carried  if  the  road  over  which  it  operated 
had  had  engines  enough  to  haul  the  trains. 

A  large  proportion  of  the  labor  required 
in  this  service  is  above  the  ordinary  in  the 
matter  of  cost.  Inspections,  to  be  of  any 
value,  must  be  intelligent  and  dependable, 
and  this  kind  of  labor  cannot  be  had  at  a 
cheap  price.  Private  cars  are  inspected 
not  only  at  the  shipping-point,  but  at  vari- 
ous points  along  the  route. 

Then  let  us  look  at  the  matter  of  hazards. 
Failure  of  the  entire  fruit  crop  in  whole 
districts  is  one  of  the  hazards.  This  hap- 
pens altogether  too  frequently.  It  means, 
46 


CAR  LINES  AND  THE  PEOPLE 

first,  a  total  failure  of  revenue  from  that 
region,  but  that  is  only  the  beginning  of  the 
loss  side  of  the  account.  Let  me  illustrate 
this  by  an  actual  occurrence  representative 
of  a  routine  feature  of  the  business. 

In  1898  the  big  ice-houses  at  Marshall- 
ville  and  Fort  Valley  were  stored  with  ice 
to  refrigerate  the  Georgia  fruit  crop;  we 
had  to  ship  that  ice  in  vessels  from  Maine 
to  Savannah  and  from  there  by  rail  to  the 
inland  peach  country;  this  was  expensive, 
but  a  big  crop  was  expected  the  next  season. 
A  late  frost  wiped  out  the  entire  crop,  and 
not  one  car  of  peaches  was  shipped  out  of 
the  state.  There  was  no  way  in  which  to 
use  the  ice  and  it  melted.  The  ice  hazard 
is  one  which  catches  the  private-car  lines 
both  coming  and  going.  A  fruit  crop  that 
is  abundant  beyond  all  calculations  often 
finds  the  local  ice  supply  insufficient.  There 
is  only  one  thing  to  do,  and  that  is  always 
done.  Ice  enough  is  shipped  from  the 
nearest  points  (often  quite  remote),  and 
47 


this  heavy  addition  of  expense  is  on  our 
shoulders  and  not  on  the  shippers ';  we  get 
no  more  for  the  refrigeration  because  of 
this  emergency  outlay. 

Under  the  exclusive  contract  the  private- 
car  line  is  obligated  to  do  its  part  to  have 
the  cars  on  hand  to  handle  the  crop,  and  if 
it  fails  to  do  so  it  is  responsible  to  the  grow- 
ers, and  settles  with  them  for  the  fruit  lost 
because  the  refrigerator-cars  were  not  there 
to  take  care  of  it.  A  very  practical  exam- 
ple of  doing  still  more  than  this  is  had  in 
an  incident  which  cost  our  lines  seventy-five 
thousand  dollars. 

Because  of  the  extreme  congestion  of 
traffic  on  a  certain  railroad  our  refriger- 
ator-cars were  not  at  the  shipping-point  of 
the  North  Carolina  strawberry  districts  at 
the  critical  moment.  Therefore  the  berries 
could  not  be  shipped  before  they  became 
damaged.  Did  the  growers  suffer  from 
this?  Not  at  all.  They  received  the  mar- 
ket price  for  their  crop,  even  a  higher  price 
48 


bo 

a 

-a 
3 
o 


CAR  LINES  AND  THE  PEOPLE 

than  if  their  berries  had  actually  reached 
the  market,  for  the  market  was  short  the 
number  of  car-loads  for  which  we  settled. 
We  had  contracted  with  the  railroad  tap- 
ping that  territory  to  deliver  so  many  cars 
to  receive  the  ripened  crop.  Through  no 
fault  of  our  own  the  cars  were  not  on  hand, 
but  we  "made  good." 

There  are  many  other  reasons  besides  the 
one  of  liability  pointed  by  this  incident  why 
the  private  car  is  the  only  logical  agency 
by  which  the  fruit  business  can  be  handled, 
and  why  the  exclusive  contract  is  the  only 
logical  basis  upon  which  the  private  car  can 
be  operated.  There  is  scarcely  a  railroad 
in  this  country  operating  in  a  fruit  territory 
whose  traffic  officials  have  not  testified 
under  oath  that  it  would  be  impractical,  if 
not  impossible,  for  their  road  to  own  fruit 
refrigerator-cars  enough  to  take  care  of  its 
own  fruit  business.  Why?  Because  the 
peach  season  or  the  berry  season,  for  exam- 
ple, lasts  only  three  or  four  weeks;  these 
4  49 


THE   PACKERS,   THE  PRIVATE 

cars  cost  over  one  thousand  dollars  each 
and  are  unsuitable  for  any  other  kind  of 
traffic ;  the  handling  and  care  of  them  is  a 
peculiar  service  which  the  railroads  admit 
they  are  not  equipped  to  perform;  a  rail- 
road furnishing  its  own  cars  would  not 
only  have  to  furnish  service  along  its  own 
rails  but  beyond  and  wherever  the  cars 

might  be. 

Now,  a  private-car  line  doing  business 

under  an  exclusive  contract  can  accomplish 

practically  all  the  essentials  of  good  service 

which  the  railroads  operating  their  own 

refrigerator-cars  could  not  give  short  of  a 

cost  which  would  be  absolutely  prohibitive. 

It  has  a  specia.  and  experienced  service, 

its  organization  covers  the  entire  United 

States,  and  wherever  there  is  a  natural 

highway  for  this  kind  of  traffic  there  will 

be  found  its  ice-houses  or  plants  and  its 

stations   for  re-icing   and  inspection.     It 

commands  the  entrance  to  and  the  outlook 

over  the  markets  of  the  country,  and  the 

50 


CAE  LINES  AND  THE   PEOPLE 

grower  has  the  advantage  of  this  scope  in 
every  particular.  He  can  send  his  fruit 
into  any  market  and  divert  it  en  route  if  he 
desires. 

As  to  the  exclusive  contract,  it  should  be 
said  that  ice  supplies,  to  be  reliable,  have  to 
be  stored  up  many  months  in  advance  of  the 
fruit  crop ;  cars  have  to  be  '  *  parked ' '  or  con- 
centrated long  before  they  are  used.  Then 
an  immense  expenditure  looking  to  the 
future  has  to  be  put  out  in  ice-plants,  other 
buildings,  and  for  other  equipment.  Re- 
cently the  Armour  Car  Lines  put  one  hun- 
dred and  twenty-five  thousand  dollars  into 
an  ice-plant  at  Las  Vegas,  Nevada,  on  the 
line  of  Senator  Clark's  new  road  that  runs 
through  the  Mojave  Desert  and  Death  Val- 
ley, an  arid  and  undeveloped  region.  Such 
an  outlay  would  have  been  absolutely  im- 
possible and  unwarranted  if  the  car  lines 
were  debarred  from  making  a  long-time 
exclusive  contract  with  the  railroad  looking 
toward  and  providing  for  the  systematic 
51 


THE   PACKERS,   THE   PRIVATE 

development  of  a  great  fruit  district  and  a 
great  fruit  traffic. 

In  almost  every  district  where  the  ex- 
clusive contract  prevails,  at  least  so  far  as 
our  lines  are  concerned,  the  growers  them- 
selves requested  the  railway  to  make  an 
exclusive  contract.  They  declared  that 
under  competition  the  supply  of  cars  and 
the  supply  of  ice  was  fluctuating  and  unre- 
liable. No  one  knew  just  how  many  cars 
they  would  be  called  on  for,  and  they  had 
either  too  few  or  too  many  when  the  days 
of  shipment  came.  Also  they  complained 
of  the  quality  of  the  service  under  the  com- 
peting system,  declaring  that  it  did  not 
minister  to  the  systematic  development  of 
the  territory. 

There  are  two  or  three  features  in  the 
Armour  system  of  distributing  dressed 
meats  which  demand  at  least  passing  at- 
tention. I  have  shown,  in  detail,  how  the 
development  of  the  modern  refrigerator- 
52 


CAR  LINES  AND   THE  PEOPLE 

car  completely  revolutionized  the  meat  busi- 
ness of  the  world. 

In  accomplishing  this  wonderful  trans- 
formation of  food  conditions,  the  refriger- 
ator-car had  a  powerful  and  indispensable 
ally  in  the  form  of  the  packers'  "branch 
houses,"  or  distributing  agencies,  contain- 
ing a  reserve  of  fresh  meats  in  the  best  of 
refrigeration,  awaiting  the  call  of  the  local 
retailers. 

Not  only  does  the  branch  house  relieve 
the  local  butcher  of  the  burden  of  providing 
extensive  refrigeration  facilities  of  his  own, 
but  it  also  allows  him  to  carry  a  smaller 
stock  than  he  would  otherwise  be  able  to 
carry  without  danger  of  disappointment  to 
his  customers. 

Quite  as  important  as  either  of  these  con- 
siderations is  the  fact  that  the  local 
" branch"  keeps  at  the  demand  of  the  re- 
tailers a  supply  of  choice  cuts,  ripened  to 
just  the  right  point.  At  call,  the  retailer  is 
able  to  go  out  and  get  for  his  most  select  and 
53 


THE   PACKERS,   THE   PRIVATE 

discriminating  customers  the  best  cuts  in 
the  best  of  condition. 

No  feature  of  the  packing  and  dressed- 
meat  business  is  more  important  than  these 
branch  houses — none  more  important  to  the 
public  as  well  as  to  the  packer.  Neither 
expense  nor  attention  to  minutest  detail  is 
spared  to  make  them  models  of  what  meat- 
houses  should  be,  perfectly  adapted  to  the 
purpose  which  they  serve.  They  are  built  of 
the  best  materials  that  money  can  buy,  and 
they  are  built  on  the  best  lines  that  inge- 
nuity and  experienced  skill  can  contrive  to 
secure  perfect  refrigeration  and  absolute 
cleanliness. 

In  the  up-to-date  branch  house  building- 
materials  that  are  practically  imperishable 
and  impervious  to  outside  influence  are 
employed  wherever  possible.  The  floors 
are  of  cement.  Storage  and  cooling  rooms 
are  lined  with  glazed  tile,  spotlessly  white 
and  smooth  as  glass.  Not  a  cranny  or  crev- 
ice is  left  in  which  dust  might  gather  or  a 
54 


CAR  LINES  AND   THE  PEOPLE 

germ  hide  from  the  frequent  cleansings.  All 
in  all,  they  are  as  near  dirt-proof,  taint- 
proof  and  germ-proof  as  a  building  can  be 
made. 

These  branch  houses  complete  the  pack- 
ers' chain  that  takes  the  animal  from  farm 
or  range,  converts  it  into  meat,  and  sets  it 
down  at  the  retail  meat-merchant's  door. 

We  would  hear  less  criticism  of  the  pack- 
ers if  consumers  could  follow  a  steer  from 
pen  to  slaughter-house,  see  it  converted 
into  " quarters"  and  "cuts"  and  hung  in 
the  cooler,  transferred  thence  to  a  clean, 
cold  car,  transported  under  ice  to  the 
farthest  part  of  the  country,  and  finally 
deposited  in  the  branch  house.  That  would 
bring  home  to  the  consumer,  as  nothing 
else  can,  the  fact  that  no  part  of  the  people 's 
food-supply  receives  more  careful  handling 
than  does  the  meat  that  comes  from  the 
large  packing-houses. 

In  the  absence  of  such  a  comprehensive 
inspection  it  would  be  a  distinct  benefit  to 
55 


THE   PACKERS,    THE   PRIVATE 

the  packers  if  the  general  public  would  take 
pains  to  visit  and  scrutinize  the  branch 
houses.  They  are  always  open  to  visitors. 
If  there  is  a  branch  house  of  Armour  &  Co. 
in  your  vicinity,  you  are  cordially  invited 
to  see  for  yourself  just  how  the  hated 
packer  takes  care  of  your  meat-supply. 

The  number  of  these  branch  houses  main- 
tained by  the  packers  is  very  great.  Ar- 
mour &  Co.  have  about  three  hundred  of 
them  in  the  United  States  alone.  From  the 
vast  number  of  requests  received  from 
many  sections  of  the  country,  asking  for  the 
installation  of  branch  houses,  it  is  very  clear 
that  these  branches  are  looked  upon  by  the 
people  as  being  of  great  benefit  to  both  the 
retailer  and  the  consumer.  Our  aim  is  to 
protect  the  retailer  and  assist  him  in  build- 
ing up  a  secure  and  permanent  trade. 

In  addition  to  the  branch  houses,  we 
have,  in  many  sections  of  the  country,  es- 
tablished    smoke-houses.    Pickled     hams, 
etc.,  are  sent  green  to  these  points  and  are 
56 


CAE  LINES  AND   THE  PEOPLE 

there  smoked  under  our  own  supervision, 
after  which  they  are  sent  to  the  branch 
house.  This  enables  the  dealer  to  get 
freshly  smoked  meats. 

One  part  of  the  system  by  which  the 
packer  distributes  fresh  meats  to  the  peo- 
ple, through  the  local  dealers,  has  been  sub- 
jected to  much  criticism — and  most  un- 
justly, too.  I  refer  to  the  " route  car,"  by 
which  meat  is  distributed  to  those  towns  not 
large  enough  to  maintain  a  branch  house 
or  a  distributing  agency,  or  even  to  enable 
the  retailer  to  order  his  meats  in  car-load 
lots. 

The  accusation  is  that  the  cars  are  used 
to  "peddle"  meats  and  thus  hurt  the  busi- 
ness of  the  local  butchers.  It  is  not  true 
that  this  is  a  peddling  proposition.  These 
cars  are  certainly  of  great  advantage  and 
benefit  to  the  local  butchers  as  well  as  the 
consumers,  and  were  brought  into  exist- 
ence to  meet  the  present  requirements  of 
the  community  at  large,  and  are  not  fairly 
57 


THE   PACKERS,   THE   PRIVATE 

to  be  considered  as  an  advantage  to  the 
packers  so  much  as  an  advantage  to  the 
people. 

If  the  community  were  sufficiently  large, 
car-load  lots  could  be  shipped  to  these  va- 
rious points  to  much  greater  advantage  to 
the  packer  and  at  a  considerable  less  ex- 
pense. But  the  demand  in  the  small  place 
is  as  urgent  as  it  is  limited;  the  retailers 
and  the  consumers  there  must  have  fresh 
meats,  but  they  cannot  take  them  in  large 
shipments;  therefore  the  route  car  is  in- 
dispensable to  the  people  of  the  small 
towns. 

It  is  far  more  expensive  to  ship  in  this 
way  than  to  ship  by  the  full  car-load. 
Every  time  one  of  these  cars  is  cut  out  of 
a  train  and  put  on  a  siding,  the  packer  must 
pay  from  three  to  five  dollars  in  addition 
to  all  the  other  transportation  charges — 
and  a  car  makes  many  such  stops  in  the 
course  of  covering  the  route  of  small 
towns. 

58 


The  question  might  be  asked:  Why  not 
ship  by  local  freight?  Because  meat  would 
not  arrive  in  good  condition.  Another  rea- 
son for  not  shipping  by  local  freight  is 
that  no  dependence  can  be  placed  upon  the 
arrival  of  meat  thus  shipped  at  a  certain 
destination  at  any  specific  time.  In  short, 
this  way  is  too  slow  and  too  unreliable  for 
the  transportation  of  fresh  meats  and  meat- 
products. 

The  car-route  salesman  visits  all  the 
towns  along  his  route  and  takes  orders  for 
shipments  to  be  made  on.  a  specific  day, 
stipulating  that  the  car  shall  arrive  at  each 
place  at  a  certain  day  and  hour — to  be  met 
by  the  wagons  of  the  retailers  .of  that  town. 
This  method  of  delivery  is  carried  out  reg- 
ularly once  or  twice  a  week,  as  occasion  de- 
mands, insuring  the  consumer  the  delivery 
of  his  meats  in  the  very  best  condition. 

We  do  not  sell  to  consumers,  but  reach 
them  through  the  meat-dealers  in  the  va- 
rious towns,  and  our  method  of  putting  the 
59 


THE   PACKERS,    THE   PRIVATE 

meats  in  their  hands  enables  them  to  get  a 
fresh  supply  at  very  short  notice,  which 
could  not  be  done  without  the  route  car. 

Showing  the  practical  working  of  this 
method  of  distribution,  let  me  relate  an  in- 
stance. Mr.  Boyd,  formerly  one  of  our 
branch-house  managers  at  St.  Louis,  Mis- 
souri, is  now  extensively  engaged  in  the  re- 
tail meat  business  at  Adrian,  Michigan. 
From  his  wide  experience  in  the  branch- 
house  meat  business,  he  certainly  knows 
whether  it  is  now  to  his  advantage,  as  a  re- 
tail butcher,  to  secure  his  meats  from  these 
route  cars. 

Mr.  Boyd  is  now  getting  the  bulk  of  his 
beef-products  from  the  route  car  running 
through  his  town,  although  he  does,  occa- 
sionally, go  to  the  local  butcher  or  slaugh- 
terer for  some  of  his  meats — but  this  only 
when  he  finds  what  he  considers  a  "bar- 
gain." 

Government  inspection  is  another  im- 
portant feature  of  the  packers'  business. 
60 


CAB  LINES  AND   THE  PEOPLE 

To  the  general  public,  the  meat-eating  pub- 
lic, it  ought  to  appeal  as  one  of  the  most  im- 
portant features  of  any  and  all  business  in 
the  whole  country.  It  is  the  wall  that 
stands  between  the  meat-eating  public  and 
the  sale  of  diseased  meat. 

This  government  inspection  alone,  if 
there  were  no  other  business  or  economic 
reasons,  would  be  an  all-sufficient  reason 
for  the  existence  of  the  packing  and 
dressed-meat  business  on  a  mammoth  scale. 
It  should,  if  understood,  make  the  general 
public  a  partisan  supporter  of  the  large 
packers. 

Strangely  enough,  in  view  of  its  vital  im- 
portance, this  government  inspection  has 
been  the  subject  of  almost  endless  misrep- 
resentation— of  ignorantly  or  maliciously 
false  statements. 

The  public  has  been  told  that  meat  ani- 
mals and  carcasses  condemned  as  diseased 
are  afterwards  secretly  made  use  of  by  the 
packers  and  sold  to  the  public  for  food  in 
61 


THE   PACKERS,   THE   PRIVATE 

the  form  of  both  dressed  meats  and  canned 
meats. 

Right  here  I  desire  to  brand  such  state- 
ments as  absolutely  false  as  applied  to  the 
business  of  Armour  &  Co.  I  believe  they 
are  equally  false  as  to  all  establishments 
in  this  country  that  are  classed  as  packing- 
houses. 

I  repeat:  In  Armour  &  Co.'s  business 
not  one  atom  of  any  condemned  animal  or 
carcass  finds  its  way,  directly  or  indirectly, 
from  any  source,  into  any  food-product  or 
food-ingredient. 

Every  meat-animal  and  every  carcass 
slaughtered  in  the  Union  Stock  Yards,  or 
stock-yards  at  any  of  the  markets  of 
the  United  States,  is  carefully  inspected 
by  the  United  States  government.  This 
inspection  by  the  national  government  is 
supplemented,  in  practically  all  cases,  by 
state  or  city  inspection,  or  both.  The  live 
animals  are  inspected  on  the  hoof  and  again 
when  slaughtered. 

62 


CAE  LINES  AND   THE   PEOPLE 

The  inspection  by  the  United  States  gov- 
ernment is  not  compulsory  on  the  packers 
in  the  strict  legal  sense  of  the  term;  it  is 
more  binding  than  if  it  were  compulsory. 
It  is  business.  Attempt  to  evade  it  would 
be,  from  the  purely  commercial  viewpoint, 
suicidal.  No  packer  can  do  an  interstate 
or  export  business  without  government  in- 
spection. Self-interest  forces  him  to  make 
use  of  it. 

Self-interest  likewise  demands  that  he 
shall  not  receive  meats  or  by-products  from 
any  small  packer,  either  for  export  or  other 
use,  unless  that  small  packer's  plant  is  also 
"official,"  that  is,  under  United  States 
government  inspection. 

This  inspection  is  carried  on  under  the 
direction  of  the  Bureau  of  Animal  Indus- 
try of  the  Department  of  Agriculture.  The 
packer  has  nothing  to  say  about  the  em- 
ployment of  the  inspectors.  They  are  as- 
signed by  the  United  States  government. 
63 


THE   PACKERS,   THE   PRIVATE 

The  government  likewise  is  judge  of  their 
qualifications. 

It  requires  of  them,  first,  that  they  shall 
have  taken  a  full  three-year  course  in  vet- 
erinary science — as  long  a  course  as  most 
states  require  for  the  admission  of  physi- 
cians and  surgeons  to  practice.  Then 
these  educated  veterinarians  are  selected 
by  rigid  civil-service  examination. 

Every  meat-animal  that  comes  to  the 
stock-yards  is  first  inspected  on  the  hoof, 
as  stated,  by  representatives  of  the  Bureau 
of  Animal  Industry.  All  that  show  signs 
of  disease  are  segregated  and  tagged  as  re- 
jected by  the  United  States  government 
inspectors.  At  regular  intervals  they  are 
slaughtered  (in  Chicago  under  direction  of 
the  state  officers)  and  consigned  to  other 
than  food  uses. " 

All     carcasses — cattle,     calves,     sheep, 

hogs — are    again   rigidly   inspected   after 

slaughter.     The  internal  organs  affected 

by  the  various  diseases  to  which  meat-ani- 

64 


CAB  LINES  AND   THE  PEOPLE 

mals  are  subject  are  examined.  On  the 
slightest  sign  of  disease  the  carcass  is  re- 
jected, and  so  marked  that  it  cannot  escape 
observation. 

From  the  moment  it  is  rejected,  that  car- 
cass is  in  the  custody  of  the  United  States 
government  agents  and  it  is  by  them  per- 
sonally followed  to  the  rendering-tank. 
It  is  hacked  into  small  pieces,  thrown  into 
the  tank,  and  emerges  only  as  grease  or  fer- 
tilizing material.  This  tanking  product  is 
in  such  form  that  it  could  not  by  any  possi- 
bility be  renovated  to  become  a  food-prod- 
uct even  if  any  packer  were  dishonest 
enough  to  attempt  that. 

And  if  it  were  possible  to  evade  inspec- 
tion and  use  condemned  carcasses  or  prod- 
uct from  an  "unofficial"  packing-house 
self-interest  would  again  prevent  it,  because 
the  packer  would  subject  himself  to  speedy 
detection  and  exposure  (if  not  endless 
blackmail)  by  the  hundreds  of  employees 
who  would  be  cognizant  of  his  trickery. 
5  65 


THE   PACKERS,   THE   PRIVATE 

This  government  inspection  thus  be- 
comes an  important  adjunct  of  the  packer's 
business  from  two  viewpoints.  It  puts  the 
stamp  of  legitimacy  and  honesty  upon  the 
packer's  product,  and  so  is  to  him  a  busi- 
ness necessity.  To  the  public  it  is  an  insur- 
ance against  the  sale  of  diseased  meats. 


66 


CAR  LINES  AND  THE   PEOPLE 


CHAPTER  IH 

MAGAZINE  VS.  ACTUAL  PROFIT 

IN  actual  business  experience  I  have 
found  nothing  so  immensely  satisfac- 
tory as  the  profit  percentages  which 
certain  writers  are  able  to  figure  on  the 
Armour  Car  Lines  and  packing  business. 
The  way  these  enterprising  journalists  can 
pile  up  paper  profits  for  me  reminds  me  of 
nothing  so  much  as  the  net  returns  to  be 
realized  in  the  breeding  of  Belgian  hares— 
on  paper..  Some  of  my  readers  may  have 
had  a  little  practical  experience  in  breeding 
these  creatures  for  market  and  trying  to 
make  the  actual  profits  coincide  with  those 
so  elaborately  set  forth  in  the  prospectus 
sent  out  by  the  breeder  of  stock  hares.  In 
the  prospectus  the  scale  of  profits  is  an 
ascending  one  in  which  nothing  short  of 
67 


THE   PACKERS,   THE  PRIVATE 

arithmetical  progression  is  capable  of  com- 
puting the  increase. 

The  net  profits  in  the  private  car  and  the 
packing  business  are  arrived  at,  by  these 
entertaining  writers,  by  the  same  process 
of  figuring  that  the  prospectus-maker  used 
to  determine  the  cumulative  profits  of  rais- 
ing Belgian  hares.  There  is  a  world  of 
difference  between  the  actual  earning  of 
actual  profits  and  the  figuring  of  paper 
profits,  where  the  total  revenue  is  arrived  at 
in  a  broad,  generous  and  offhand  way  with 
a  large  ignorance  and  comprehensive  dis- 
regard to  costs,  expenses,  and  all  the  prac- 
tical elements  and  details  really  involved. 
If  these  writers  could  actually  deliver  the 
profit  percentages  which  they  are  able  to 
produce  on  paper  they  could  command 
higher  salaries  in  the  packing  or  private- 
car  business  than  any  magazine  in  America 
can  afford  to  pay  them. 

If  any  business  man  who  reads,  in  these 
articles  put  out  by  the  magazine  writers, 
68 


CAE  LINES  AND  THE  PEOPLE 

the  statement  of  our  profits  is  inclined  to 
believe  them,  I  have  only  this  little  act  of 
justice  to  ask  him : 

Go  to  some  neighbor  who  already  has  a 
profound  conviction  that  you  are  making 
too  much  money,  and  let  him  figure,  from 
hearsay  information,  the  profits  which  you 
make.  If  you  are  then  honestly  content  to 
be  judged  by  a  showing  arrived  at  in  such 
manner  I  will  find  no  fault  if  you  will  accept 
as  true  the  profits  figured  for  the  Armour 
Car  Lines  by  these  writers  who  start  out 
with  a  necessity  of  making  a  case  by  show- 
ing exorbitant  profits,  and  who  are  unham- 
pered by  information  and  have  a  splendid 
indifference  to  all  matters  of  cost. 

Just  try  this  experiment ;  you  will  find  it 
hugely  entertaining.  Perhaps  also  it  will 
teach  you  how  far  you  fall  short,  as  a  finan- 
cial genius,  of  the  expectations  and  ideas  of 
those  who  feel  that  you  are  making  more 
money  than  you  have  any  business  to  make. 
This  may  be  a  little  dampening  to  your 
69 


THE   PACKERS,   THE   PRIVATE 

pride  right  at  the  start,  but  it  will  suggest 
to  you  what  you  could  accomplish  if  you 
could  somehow  contrive  to  eliminate  the 
matter  of  expenses,  and  to  use  your  best 
day's  business  as  an  "average"  by  which 
to  multiply  the  business  of  the  three  hun- 
dred business  days  in  the  year. 

The  profits  of  the  private-car  business 
cannot,  with  any  fairness,  be  judged  on  a 
harvest-time  basis— which  the  critics  of  the 
enterprise  seem  to  insist  upon  doing.  It 
would  be  unfair  to  take  the  profit  for  a 
whole  year  and  judge  the  business  upon 
that  basis.  Why?  Because  this  is  a  busi- 
ness of  lean  years  as  well  as  fat  years.  Then 
the  period  of  profitable  and  established 
operation  should  be  averaged  with  the 
years  in  which  the  business  was  in  a  strug- 
gling and  pioneer  stage.  Absolute  fairness 
would  go  further  than  this  and  take  into 
account  the  exigencies  of  the  future— such, 
for  example,  as  the  possibility  that  modern 
inventive  genius  may  render  practically 
70 


CAB  LINES  AND  THE  PEOPLE 

useless  and  obsolete  an  equipment  now 
representing  an  investment  of  millions  of 
dollars,  and  this  possibility  is  by  no  means 
so  remote  that  good  business  prudence 
would  not  take  it  into  account. 

Again  I  urge  each  business  man  who 
attaches  any  weight  to  the  profits  of  the 
Armour  interests  as  they  are  figured  in  the 
magazines  to  act  on  this  suggestion.  The 
injustice  of  criticism  and  attack  based  on 
this  kind  of  figuring  will  be  so  apparent  to 
the  man  who  tries  this  experiment  that  he 
will  never  again  be  tempted  to  place  any 
confidence  whatever  in  assertions  arrived 
at  by  such  a  process.  I  deny  that  the 
profits  of  the  private-car-line  business  and 
the  packing  business  are  extortionate.  I 
have  no  desire  to  deny  that  both  these  in- 
terests do  pay  a  profit.  I  should  consider 
it  a  poor  compliment  to  the  manner  in  which 
I  have  discharged  my  responsibilities  if  this 
were  not  so.  Let  it  be  said,  too,  that  the 
aggregate  of  these  profits  is  respectable — 
71 


THE   PACKERS,   THE   PRIVATE 

to  many  it  probably  looks  immense;  but  it 
is  not  excessive  or  disproportionate  when 
the  immense  volume  of  capital  invested  is 
considered. 

Perhaps  I  am  not  called  upon  to  say  so, 
but  I  will  make  the  statement  that  had  I 
put  my  holdings,  at  the  time  I  came  into 
them,  into  railroads,  national  banks,  and 
other  enterprises,  I  should  have  made  more 
money,  made  it  with  less  trouble,  and  been 
subjected  to  less  attack  than  I  have  been 
subjected  to  in  the  lines  which  I  have  fol- 
lowed. 

More  than  that,  I  sincerely  believe  in  the 
making  of  that  money  I  should  have  been 
of  far  less  service  in  the  industrial  develop- 
ment of  this  country  than  I  have  been  in 
the  private-car-line  and  the  packing  busi- 
ness. 

Mind  you,  I  am  not  posing  as  a  philan- 
thropist or  asking  for  any  credit  on  that  or 
any  kindred  score.  Just  common-sense 
selfishness  and  the  regard  for  the  well-being 
72 


CAB  LINES  AND  THE  PEOPLE 

of  humanity  that  the  ordinary  decent  citi- 
zen has  are  all  the  motives  that  I  lay  claim 
to  in  the  conduct  of  my  business ;  but  I  do 
confess  to  a  sense  of  personal  satisfaction 
in  the  fact  that  the  prosperity  of  the  prop- 
erty of  the  Armour  Car  Lines  and  the 
Armour  Company  has  been  inseparable 
from  that  of  the  fruit,  produce,  and  cattle 
industries  of  the  country ;  that  thousands  of 
men  in  these  lines  have  been  enabled  to 
make  independent  fortunes  by  the  activities 
of  the  private  car;  that,  as  an  incident -to  a 
business  success,  the  whole  people  of  this 
country,  and  of  other  countries  for  that 
matter,  enjoy  comforts  and  luxuries  other- 
wise impossible;  that  the  standard  of  the 
world's  living,  in  a  sanitary  and  economic 
sense,  has  been  immensely  improved  by 
reason  of  the  operation  of  a  business  run 
for  personal  and  selfish  gain. 

A  reasonable  amount  of  pride  in  these 
facts  is,  I  believe,  quite  pardonable,  and  the 
satisfaction  I  get  from  this  consideration 
73 


THE   PACKERS,   THE   PRIVATE 

is,  I  confess,  quite  as  tangible  and  satisfac- 
tory a  kind  of  dividend  as  I  have  been  able 
to  draw.  I  believe  most  profoundly  that 
there  are  very  few  industries  in  existence 
that  have  contributed  so  much  to  the  com- 
fort and  progress  of  this  nation  as  the 
packing  and  private-car  industries  have 
contributed,  and  these  benefits  have  been  to 
all  the  people,  for  there  are  few  who  are 
not  able  to  enjoy,  to  some  extent,  the  fresh 
fruit,  vegetables,  and  meat  that  the  private 
refrigerator-car  has  guaranteed  at  all  times 
to  the  public. 

Too  much  emphasis  cannot,  in  fairness, 
be  placed  upon  the  fact  that  the  growers 
everywhere  hail  the  private  fruit-car  as  the 
direct  agency  of  their  prosperity  and  ex- 
pansion, and  that  the  cost  of  this  service 
has  certainly  not  been  so  great  as  to  choke 
or  stifle  their  development.  Instead,  they 
freely  declare  that  the  private  car  has  liber- 
ated them  from  conditions  which  were 
choking  and  smothering  their  business. 
74 


CAR  LINES  AND  THE  PEOPLE 

Careless  writers  and  persons  with  axes  of 
their  own  to  grind  have  sought  to  create 
the  impression  that ' '  refrigeration  service ' ' 
as  applied  to  fruit  transportation  is  only  a 
high-sounding  synonym  for  " selling  ice." 
Nothing  could  be  further  from  the  truth. 
Refrigeration  service  furnished  by  the  pri- 
vate-car lines  is  exactly  what  the  term 
implies.  It  is  service— a  special  service — 
that  insures  to  the  grower  or  shipper  of 
fruit  a  certain  supply  of  the  highest  type 
of  modern  cars,  careful  loading,  prompt 
moving,  frequent  inspection,  and  delivery  of 
the  fruit  in  good  condition. 

This  service  is  comprehensive,  highly  or- 
ganized, and  expert.  Transportation  of 
fruit,  care  for  a  highly-perishable  com- 
modity, is  its  special  and  only  work.  Cost 
of  ice  is  but  one  item  in  the  expense  of 
maintaining  it.  Its  efficiency  lies  in  the 
maintenance  of  a  large  and  complex  or- 
ganization of  trained  men  who  are  charged 
with  the  task  not  only  of  taking  care  of 
75 


THE   PACKERS,   THE   PRIVATE 

fruit  in  transit,  but  of  seeing  that  the 
grower  or  shipper  has  cars,  and  the  right 
kind  of  cars,  in  first-class  condition,  when 
he  needs  them,  and  not  about  when  he  needs 
them. 

The  charge  for  refrigeration  service  also 
covers  maintenance,  repair,  and  replace- 
ment of  the  tools  employed  in  the  business 
— the  ice-making  plants,  ice-houses,  icing- 
stations  both  in  the  fruit-growing  sections 
and  throughout  the  country  along  the 
routes  from  the  growing  locality  to  the 
market,  repair-shops,  and  the  cars  them- 
selves. These  cars  cost  from  one  thousand 
dollars  to  twelve  hundred  dollars  each— a 
third  and  sometimes  half  more  than  the 
ordinary  box  car.  They  are  easily  dam- 
aged. Almost  every  car  needs  more  or  less 
repairs  every  trip.  They  wear  out  more 
quickly  than  ordinary  freight-cars,  and  are 
more  easily  put  out  of  service  from  many 
causes.  When  returning  empty,  railroads 
frequently  press  them  into  use  for  other 
76 


CAR  LINES  AND  THE  PEOPLE 

freight.  If  loaded  with  anything  that 
leaves  an  odor— drugs,  kerosene  oil,  etc.,  as 
happens  often— the  car  is  likely  to  be  made 
useless  for  further  service  in  the  fruit- 
carrying  trade. 

To  convey  a  concrete  idea  of  what  this 
fruit-refrigeration  service  means  let  us  fol- 
low the  shipping  of  a  car-load  of  oranges 
from  California  to  Boston. 

California  is  a  district  in  which  a  field 
organization  must  be  maintained  practi- 
cally the  year  round.  We  have  to  maintain 
our  own  car-repair  shops  and  icing-stations, 
and  when  fruit  is  moving  a  band  of  more 
than  fifty  men  as  inspectors,  supervisors, 
etc.,  whose  traveling  expenses,  as  well  as 
salaries,  have  to  be  paid,  are  up  and  down 
through  the  district  superintending  the 
loading  and  icing,  enforcing  prompt  move- 
ment of  cars,  and  pushing  all  details  of  the 
work.  All  told,  we  have  a  force  of  more 
than  two  hundred  men  in  California  during 
the  season. 

77 


,THE   PACKEES,   THE   PRIVATE 

Before  the  fruit-shipping  season  opens, 
cars  enough  to  handle  the  crop  must  be  as- 
sembled at  points  convenient  to  the  shipping- 
stations.  More  than  half  of  them  go  West 
empty  and  are  subject  to  many  delays; 
some  may  be  loaded  with  clean  package 
freight.  These  will  be  from  fifteen  to 
thirty  days  en  route  from  Chicago  to  Los 
Angeles,  and  unloading  there  may  be  de- 
layed. During  all  this  period,  before  a 
pound  of  fruit  is  loaded,  the  car  line  com- 
pany must  keep  track  of  these  cars,  trace 
them  from  point  to  point,  and  know  whether 
they  are  empty  and  available  for  immedi- 
ate use  or  loaded  and  unavailable.  Finally, 
the  car  we  are  following  lands  at  our  Los 
Angeles  shop,  where  a  large  force  of  car 
repairers  is  employed  at  all  times;  they 
thoroughly  overhaul  the  car,  put  new  pad- 
ding on  doors  and  hatch-plugs,  clean  and 
repair  tank-pans,  drains  and  drain-traps, 
and  attend  to  any  other  repairs  needed, 
78 


CAE  LINES  AND  THE   PEOPLE 

from  supplying  a  new  roof  to  a  new  set  of 
trucks. 

After  the  car  is  thoroughly  overhauled 
and  inspected  to  see  that  it  is  sweet  and 
clean  and  in  proper  condition  to  carry  a 
perishable  load  of  fruit,  its  tanks  are  filled 
with  about  ten  thousand  pounds  of  ice.  This 
initial  icing  alone  in  Los  Angeles  is  a  heavy 
expense.  Wonderful  things  are  grown  in 
California,  but  no  one,  not  even  the  won- 
derful Mr.  Burbank,  has  been  able  to  grow 
a  natural  crop  of  ice  in  southern  Cali- 
fornia. For  northern  California  we  must 
haul  the  ice  from  the  mountains  at  heavy 
expense  for  freight  and  shrinkage.  We 
also  buy  enormous  quantities  of  manufac- 
tured ice.  In  1905  we  bought  more  than 
one  hundred  and  twenty  thousand  tons  of 
ice  in  California. 

When  the  car  is  iced  it  is  sent  out  to  the 
loading-point  to  receive  its  load.  During 
this  process  there  is  a  further  heavy  shrink- 
age of  ice  in  the  tanks.  The  car  may  have 
79 


THE   PACKERS,   THE   PRIVATE 

been  standing  for  days  in  a  railroad  yard. 
The  fruit  loaded  into  it  and  the  packages 
containing  that  fruit  are  also  hot — soaked, 
as  it  were,  in  California  sunshine.  The  car 
and  its  load  must  be  brought  down  to  a  low 
temperature.  Every  board,  every  nail, 
every  orange,  every  piece  of  wood,  exudes 
heat.  Much  ice  must  be  melted,  obviously, 
to  bring  the  hot  car  and  its  load  down  to 
a  low  temperature. 

The  car,  when  loaded,  is  sent  back  to  Los 
Angeles  (to  Bakersfield  if  going  East  by  f 
the  northern  route),  its  ice  tanks  are  re- 
filled, it  is  thoroughly  inspected  again  by 
car-line  men,  and  is  started  on  its  journey 
East.  If  it  takes  the  southern  route  it 
stops  first  at  Tucson,  Arizona,  to  be  re-iced 
under  the  supervision  of  a  car-line  agent, 
who  not  only  sees  that  the  tanks  are  prop- 
erly filled  to  capacity,  but  also  makes  a  per- 
sonal inspection  of  all  drain-pipes,  etc.  The 
car  then  passes  on  to  El  Paso,  where  car- 
line  agents  are  waiting  for  it.  It  is  again 
80 


CAR  LINES  AND  THE  PEOPLE 

thoroughly  re-iced  and  inspected  and  sent 
on  to  Fort  Worth,  where  another  agent  is 
in  waiting  to  perform  the  same  service. 
This  process  is  repeated  seven  or  eight 
times  more  before  the  car  reaches  Boston- 
Kansas  City;  Davenport,  Iowa;  Chicago; 
Galion,  Ohio ;  Hornellsville,  New  York ;  and 
East  Deerfield,  Massachusetts. 

The  same  careful  attention  is  given  it  at 
each  of  these  icing-stations  as  was  given  at 
the  beginning  of  its  journey.  The  same 
facilities  are  maintained  on  all  the  various 
routes.  If  slow  time  by  the  railroads  or 
weather  conditions  necessitate  a  larger 
amount  of  ice  than  usual  at  any  point,  extra 
icing-stations  are  put  in  immediately.  This 
is  watched  very  carefully  by  an  elaborate 
system  in  the  Chicago  office,  and  is  also 
supervised  by  the  traveling  inspectors. 
They  drop  in  on  the  various  icing-stations 
unannounced.  This  work,  however,  is 
more  of  a  precaution  than  a  necessity.  The 
agents  who  are  strung  across  the  country  in 
6  81 


THE   PACKERS,   THE   PRIVATE 

nearly  all  cases  have  been  with  the  car  lines 
a  long  time,  and  are  men  who  take  a  per- 
sonal pride  in  the  welfare  of  the  business. 

Let  us  not  be  understood  that  any  of  this 
frequent  re-icing  and  re-inspection  has  been 
done  at  random.  When  the  car  leaves  Los 
Angeles,  the  car  number,  its  condition,  and 
digest  of  the  way-bill  are  all  taken  by  a  car- 
line  inspector  and  filed  with  the  district 
agent  in  charge  of  that  territory.  The  car- 
line  agent  at  the  next  station — Tucson  in 
this  case — is  notified  by  mail,  or  by  wire  if 
necessary,  that  the  car  is  on  the  way  to  him. 
This  checking  and  notification  of  stations 
ahead  continues  without  break  until  the  car 
reaches  destination.  From  the  first  icing 
until  delivery  at  destination  the  car  is  under 
the  eye  of  the  car-line  organization  every 
hour  and  is  kept  moving. 

When  the  car  finally  reaches  Boston  it  is 

met   again   by   a   car-line   inspector-    He 

notes  its  condition,  sees  it  opened,  inspects 

condition  of  its  load,  and  reports  all  details 

82 


CAB  LINES  AND  THE  PEOPLE 

to  the  head  office.  This  emphasizes  the  in- 
surance the  service  gives  the  shipper.  No- 
body in  Boston  ventures  to  report  to  the 
shipper  in  California  that  a  car  handled  and 
watched  as  described  has  ' '  arrived  in  bad 
condition. ' ' 

The  history  of  this  car  as  traced  from 
California  to  Boston  is  typical.  The  same 
thing,  generally  speaking,  happens  to  every 
private  fruit  refrigerator-car,  no  matter 
from  what  point  it  starts  or  to  what  point 
it  is  billed.  Therefore,  I  repeat,  the  cost 
of  this  service  embraces  many  items,  to 
wit :  Expensive  ice  in  a  hot,  non-ice-bearing 
country,  at  the  beginning  of  the  journey, 
just  where  the  most  ice  is  needed;  mainte- 
nance of  repair-shops  at  various  places 
(Chicago,  Omaha,  Kansas  City,  Fort 
Worth,  Los  Angeles,  Sacramento,  and  many 
other  points) ;  salaries  of  inspectors  wher- 
ever cars  are  iced;  salaries  of  executive 
officers  and  clerks;  cost  of  maintaining 
83 


THE   PACKERS,   THE   PRIVATE 

icing-stations ;  repairs ;  depreciation ;  inter- 
est on  the  investment,  etc. 

The  item  of  repair  is  a  heavy  one.  Dur- 
ing a  short,  rush  season,  as  in  handling 
Michigan  and  Georgia  peaches,  time  does 
not  permit  sending  cars  to  the  shops,  but 
car-repairers  have  to  be  sent  into  the  field. 
In  Michigan  last  fall  three  car-repair  su- 
perintendents were  maintained  in  the  field, 
and  each  had  from  five  to  ten  men  with 
him,  at  the  expense  of  the  car  line.  In 
view  of  these  facts  I  submit  that  a  tariff 
rate  of  seventy-seven  dollars  and  fifty  cents 
Los  Angeles  to  Boston  on  the  car  outlined 
above  is  as  low  as  good  and  proper  service 
will  permit.  It  was  only  a  few  years  ago 
that  the  rate  was  ninety-five  dollars,  but  we 
were  able  to  reduce  our  operating-expenses 
and  gave  the  shippers  the  benefit  of  it. 
Just  as  soon  as  conditions  will  warrant  it 
the  rate  will  again  be  reduced. 

The  private-car-line  service  also  enables 
the  shipper  to  control  the  destination  of  his 
84 


CAB  LINES  AND  THE  PEOPLE 

product  and  to  avoid  glutted  markets.  It 
works  this  way:  A  shipper  starts  a  car  of 
peaches  from  Grand  Rapids,  Michigan,  to 
Boston.  After  the  car  has  left,  he  learns 
that  the  Boston  market  is  full.  At  any 
place  along  the  route  of  that  car— Detroit, 
Buffalo,  Albany— he  can  change  its  destina- 
tion to  New  York,  Providence,  Philadel- 
phia, Baltimore,  or  any  other  point  that 
promises  a  better  market.  In  1904,  during 
the  one  month  of  July,  more  than  five  hun- 
dred cars  of  Georgia  peaches,  an  average 
of  more  than  sixteen  a  day,  were  caught  at 
Cincinnati  alone,  diverted  from  their  orig- 
inal destination,  and  sent  to  other  places 
that  promised  better  results.  This  diver- 
sion of  a  car  from  one  point  to  another  is 
most  practicable  with  the  kind  of  an  organi- 
zation maintained  by  the  private-car  lines. 
The  point  I  desire  to  emphasize  with 
these  details  is  that  the  refrigerator-service 
tariff  is  not  an  arbitrary  charge.  It  is 
based  mathematically  upon  the  service  to 
85 


THE   PACKERS,   THE   PRIVATE 

be  performed,  and  is  earned  by  the  service 
rendered.  This  view  is  held  with  practical 
unanimity  by  all  growers  and  shippers  who 
have  had  experience  both  with  private-car- 
line  service  and  with  refrigeration  service 
furnished  by  the  railroads.  One  example 
of  this  will  suffice. 

In  1901  a  certain  railroad  touching 
Benton  Harbor,  Michigan,  was  undertaking 
to  furnish  refrigeration  service  at  cost  of 
ice.  Private  cars  were  operating  on  an- 
other road  reaching  that  same  point.  Mr. 
Roland  Morrell,  of  Benton  Harbor,  one  of 
the  best  fruit-growers  in  America,  had 
twenty-five  cars  of  choice  peaches  to  ship. 
He  was  within  three  miles  of  a  loading-sta- 
tion on  the  road  which  provided  refrigera- 
tion at  cost  of  ice.  To  reach  a  loading- 
station  of  the  private-car  lines  his  peaches 
had  to  be  hauled  five  miles,  part  of  the  way 
uphill.  Yet  he  turned  his  back  upon  the 
alleged  low-price  service,  made  the  five- 
mile  haul,  shipped  in  private  cars,  and  paid 
86 


the  tariff  of  fifty-five  dollars  a  car  to  Boston 
rather  than  take  a  chance  on  railroad  re- 
frigeration service.  Asked  why  he  paid 
this  "unnecessary"  charge,  he  said:  tfl 
raise  peaches  to  sell.  I  am  not  raising 
peaches  to  be  spoiled  in  transit  and  paid  for 
by  the  railroad. ' ' 

Mr.  John  R.  Wylie,  of  Shelby,  Michigan, 
said  to  one  of  our  representatives:  "For 
long  shipments  we  prefer  the  private-car- 
line  service,  with  all  its  cost,  to  ice  at  actual 
cost  with  the  imperfect  service  of  the  trans- 
portation companies." 

At  the  close  of  the  last  Michigan  peach 
season  the  Fennville  Herald,  which  is  the 
organ  of  one  of  Michigan's  heaviest  peach- 
shipping  points,  a  paper  that  has  never 
shown  friendliness  toward  private-car  lines, 
and  is  edited  by  the  secretary  of  the  Michi- 
gan State  Horticultural  Society,  said  that 
had  it  not  been  for  the  good  work  done  by 
the  Armour  private-car  lines  in  furnishing 
plenty  of  first-class  cars  and  looking  after 
87 


THE   PACKERS,   THE   PRIVATE 

the  prompt  icing  of  same  in  transit,  that 
section  would  have  been  ruined  the  last 
season. 

Almost  every  fruit  and  vegetable  grow- 
ing district  in  this  country  is  a  living  wit- 
ness to  the  pioneering  work  and  the  effi- 
ciency of  the  private-car  line.  These  lines 
have  served  both  to  develop  new  fields  and 
to  widen  the  market  of  the  fields  already  in 
existence  when  they  entered  business.  This 
one  fact  alone  should  be  sufficient  to 
demonstrate  the  truth  of  that  statement: 
there  are  practically  no  reliable  statistics 
to  be  had  anywhere  in  the  country  in  rela- 
tion to  the  fruit  industry  save  those  gath- 
ered by  the  private-car  lines.  A  caller  at 
the  Agricultural  Department  in  Washing- 
ton, D.  C.,  a  few  weeks  ago  asked  for  statis- 
tics on  the  fruit  crop  of  Idaho.  He  was 
told  that  the  department  had  none,  and  that 
aside  from  the  apple  crop  the  Agricultural 
Department  had  no  fruit  statistics  what- 
ever. 

88 


CAB  LINES  AND   THE   PEOPLE 

Is  it  not  remarkable  that  so  many  people 
should  be  eager  to  legislate  definitely  in 
relation  to  an  industry  that  amounts  to  more 
than  four  hundred  million  dollars  a  year, 
yet  on  which  there  is  so  little  information 
that  the  Agricultural  Department  of  the 
government  has  no  statistics  whatever? 


89 


THE   PACKERS,   THE   PRIVATE 
CHAPTER  IV 

WHAT   THE    PRIVATE-CAR   LINE   HAS   DONE 

UP  to  ten  years  ago  practically  no  fruit 
was  shipped  out  of  Michigan  under 
refrigeration.    Practically  all  of  the 
crop  was  dumped  into  Chicago  by  boat  and 
by  ventilated  cars.    The  Chicago  market 
was   uniformly  low   in   consequence,   and 
Chicago  commission  men  made  handsome 
profits  by  re-shipping  Michigan  peaches  to 
other  points,  even  back  into  Michigan. 

The  private-car  line  began  to  investigate 
the  Michigan  field  some  years  ago.  The 
car-line  agent  discovered  that  Michigan 
growers  and  shippers  would  not  ship  to 
eastern  markets,  such  as  Boston,  New 
York,  Pittsburg,  etc.,  because  they  had  no 
personal  acquaintance  with  firms  handling 
fruit  at  those  points.  The  agent  made  it 
his  business  to  get  into  communication  with 
90 


CAR  LINES  AND   THE   PEOPLE 

eastern  fruit-dealers.  Many  of  them  were 
skeptical  as  to  the  statement  that  they  could 
buy  fancy  peaches  in  Michigan.  They 
were  told  to  send  their  buyers  into  that  dis- 
trict and,  if  they  found  that  the  results  did 
not  justify  the  effort,  the  car  lines  would 
pay  the  expense.  Several  of  them  took  ad- 
vantage of  that  offer ;  they  came,  were  con- 
vinced, and  bought. 

This  practice  of  sending  buyers  to  the 
door  of  the  grower — buyers  who  buy  for 
cash  and  do  not  require  the  grower  to  ship 
on  commission— has  spread  to  all  parts  of 
the  country.  This  is  not  the  least  of  the 
advantages  that  the  private-car  lines  have 
brought  to  the  fruit-growers.  It  gives  the 
grower  a  market  at  his  own  door,  and  his 
product  is  disposed  of  without  risk  to  him- 
self. 

Since  1889  the  fruit  and  vegetable  indus- 
try in  California  has  grown  practically  ten 
times  in  volume;  and  financially  it  is  in 
better  condition  than  at  any  previous  time 
91 


THE   PACKERS,   THE   PRIVATE 

in  its  history.  California  shipped,  in  1905, 
thirty  thousand  cars  of  lemons  and  oranges 
at  an  increase  in  profit  over  1904  of  more 
than  one  hundred  dollars  per  car.  At  this 
writing  two  hundred  cars  a  day  are  coming 
out  of  that  state.  The  orange  and  lemon 
industry  of  California  would  not  have  been 
developed  without  the  private  car. 

A  few  years  ago  head  lettuce  was  a  rarity 
in  northern  markets.  The  private-car  line 
has  developed  this  trade  and  has  made 
many  Florida  farmers  rich  thereby.  In 
the  beginning,  not  more  than  half  a  dozen 
years  ago,  one  car  a  day  of  head  lettuce  was 
sufficient  to  supply  the  New  York  market. 
New  York  alone  now  absorbs  forty  to  fifty 
cars  a  day  during  the  winter  months. 

A  car-line  agent  interested  strawberry- 
growers  around  Nashville,  in  1903,  to  ship 
eight  or  ten  cars  as  an  experiment.  Re- 
sults were  so  good  that  the  shipments  rose 
to  twenty  cars  in  1904  and  to  sixty  cars  in 
1905.  Humboldt,  Tennessee,  used  to  send 
92 


CAK  LINES  AND   THE  PEOPLE 

out  about  fifty  cars  of  tomatoes  a  season 
six  or  seven  years  ago.  The  tomatoes  had 
to  be  shipped  green  and  ripened  in  the  com- 
mission man's  storeroom,  which,  of  course, 
impaired  the  quality.  Humboldt  now  ships 
in  a  season  five  hundred  cars  of  tomatoes 
that  are  allowed  to  ripen  on  the  vines  and 
therefore  bring  a  much  better  price. 

The  new  prune-plum  district  of  Idaho 
has  been  developed  entirely  by  the  private- 
car-line  missionary  work  and  within  a  very 
few  years.  The  far  northwest  now  sends 
to  market  from  two  thousand  to  three  thou- 
sand cars  a  year.  Other  important  new 
districts  are  being  similarly  developed  in 
northeast  Texas,  in  Utah,  Colorado,  Ari- 
zona, Arkansas,  and  Missouri. 

The  principal  fruit-growing  districts  of 
the  country  in  1899  shipped  under  refriger- 
ation only  nine  thousand  one  hundred  and 
sixty-four  cars;  the  same  districts  in  1905 
shipped  forty-two  thousand  nine  hundred 
and  eighty-two  cars.  In  particular  districts 
93 


THE   PACKERS,   THE  PRIVATE 

during  this  period  shipments  have  been 
multiplied  to  ten  and  even  twenty  times 
over  so  far  as  the  Armour  lines  alone  are 
concerned. 

A  phase  of  this  development  that  is  not 
to  be  minimized  is  the  increased  value  given 
to  the  permanent  investment  in  the  fruit 
and  vegetable  growing  lands.  Michigan 
peach  lands  undeveloped  are  worth  only 
from  six  to  ten  dollars  and  never  more  than 
twenty-five  dollars  an  acre;  with  bearing 
peach  orchards  they  command  two  hundred 
dollars  to  three  hundred  dollars  an  acre. 
Florida  lands  that  were  almost  worthless 
are  now  yielding  to  growers  of  head  lettuce 
and  other  early  vegetables  an  annual  re- 
turn of  five  hundred  dollars  to  one  thousand 
dollars  an  acre.  There  are  districts  in 
Georgia  where  lands  bought  for  one  dollar 
an  acre  are  now  worth,  with  peach  orchards 
in  bearing,  three  hundred  dollars  an  acre. 
California  orange  and  lemon  bearing  lands 
are  worth  one  thousand  dollars  an  acre. 
94 


CAR  LINES  AND  THE  PEOPLE 

It  is  impossible  to  overemphasize  the  de- 
velopment work  of  the  private-car  lines  in 
providing  for  the  grower  a  sure  market  and 
a  profitable  market.  The  grower  wants  to 
know  before  he  lays  out  money  on  his  land 
that  he  will  be  able  to  deliver  his  products 
to  markets  in  prime  condition;  the  private- 
car-line  service  gives  him  that  assurance. 
The  shipper  wants  to  know,  when  he  loads 
a  car  of  perishable  fruit,  that  everything 
possible  will  be  done  to  carry  that  fruit  to 
any  market  or  to  the  best  market  in  good 
condition,  so  that  it  may  command  a  fair 
price  there;  the  private-car-line  service 
gives  him  that  assurance.  The  business  of 
both  the  grower  and  the  shipper  is  thus,  as 
it  were,  insured. 

That  growers  and  shippers  all  over  the 
country  take  this  view  is  proclaimed  in  the 
reams  of  sworn  testimony  given  in  the  past 
year  or  two  before  the  Interstate  Commerce 
Commission  and  in  testimony  before  the 
Senate  and  House  Committees  of  Congress 
95 


THE   PACKERS,   THE   PEIVATE 

at  Washington.  Mr.  C.  A.  Sessions,  of 
Shelby,  Michigan,  aptly  summarized  this 
phase  of  the  question  a  few  weeks  ago  in 
conversation  with  one  of  our  agents.  Mr. 
Sessions  is  essentially  a  grower — one  of  the 
most  successful  in  the  country — one  who 
makes  his  peach  orchard  pay  him  all  the 
way  from  fifty  dollars  to  one  hundred  and 
twenty  dollars  an  acre  net  profit. 

"With  private-car-line  service,"  says 
Mr.  Sessions,  "  buyers  come  to  us— to  our 
very  doors— because  they  know  this  service 
will  deliver  in  good  condition  what  they 
buy.  That  makes  a  good  market.  Indif- 
ferent service  keeps  out  the  buyers.  That 
makes  a  poor  market  and  throws  our  fruit 
into  Chicago,  where  the  market  is  almost 
always  glutted  with  fruit  that  goes  across 
the  lake  by  boat.  Chicago  commission  men 
work  to  keep  it  glutted.  We  have  had 
commission-house  solicitors  running  up  and 
down  our  streets  here  soliciting  shipments, 
when  they  knew  Chicago  was  already  over- 
96 


CAR  LINES  AND  THE  PEOPLE 

stocked.  That  was  to  get  our  fancy  peaches 
at  a  low,  glutted  market  price,  so  they  could 
be  reshipped  to  other  points  at  a  profit. 

1 1  The  effect  of  such  a  situation — growers 
deprived  of  efficient  refrigerator-car  service 
—is  doubly  bad.  It  depresses  prices  and  it 
causes  quality  to  deteriorate.  In  an  over- 
stocked market  fancy  peaches  will  not  bring 
enough  more  than  common  ones  to  pay  for 
the  extra  cost  and  labor  put  into  growing 
high  quality.  One  of  the  greatest  benefits 
of  the  private-car  service  is  that  it  has  en- 
couraged us  to  strive  for  quality.  With 
that  service,  when  we  grow  fancy  peaches, 
we  know  we  can  get  a  good  market  for 
them." 

Mr.  J.  R.  Wylie,  of  Shelby,  Michigan, 
supports  Mr.  Sessions  with  this  testimony 
on  Chicago  as  a -market:  ''This  last  summer 
I  shipped  plums  to  two  points,  Chicago  and 
Dayton,  Ohio.  The  same  kind  of  plums  went 
to  both  places.  My  Chicago  shipment 
averaged  eighty  cents  a  bushel  net;  my 

7  97 


Dayton  shipment  averaged  one  dollar  and 
forty-five  cents  a  bushel  net." 

A  leaf  from  our  own  experience  corrobo- 
rates both  Mr.  Sessions  and  Mr.  Wylie. 
Last  fall  representatives  of  two  large 
eastern  fruit-houses  came  West  to  buy 
Michigan  peaches.  They  wanted  to  ship  in 
private  cars.  At  the  Michigan  points 
served  by  private  cars  they  found  compet- 
ing buyers.  They  also  discovered  that 
quantities  of  Michigan  peaches  were  being 
dumped  into  Chicago  by  boat  and  by  rail 
from  points  not  covered  by  the  private-car 
service.  Those  agents  forthwith  came  to 
Chicago,  went  on  the  open  market  in  South 
Water  Street,  and  there  bought  Michigan 
peaches  for  shipment  East  at  lower  prices 
than  they  would  have  had  to  pay  over  in 
Michigan  at  points  served  by  private  cars. 
More  than  four  hundred  cars  were  thus 
handled. 

According  to  commission  men  of  a  cer- 
tain kind— the  kind  who  are  the  source  of 
98 


CAR  LINES  AND  THE   PEOPLE 

practically  all  agitation  against  the  car 
lines— the  private  cars  check  rather  than 
develop  the  fruit-growing  industry.  In 
view  of  what  has  been  shown  as  to  growers ' 
and  shippers'  views  it  may  be  asked: 
"Have  the  commission  men  a  motive?" 
Let  us  look  at  an  example  of  what  used  to 
be  a  not  infrequent  experience  of  fruit- 
shippers  before  the  guarantees  of  the  pri- 
vate-car service  were  thrown  around  the 
business. 

Not  many  seasons  ago  a  grower  in 
Georgia  shipped  two  cars  of  peaches  to  an 
Indiana  city.  The  consignee  wired  the 
grower  that  both  cars  arrived  in  "bad  con- 
dition," intimating  that  the  price  would 
have  to  be  cut.  The  grower  asked  the  car- 
line  agent's  advice  as  to  what  he  should  do 
about  it.  He  was  advised:  "Those  cars 
left  here  in  good  condition  and  are,  un- 
doubtedly, in  good  condition  now.  Our 
reports  will  back  up  a  lawsuit  and  probably 
enable  you  to  collect  for  your  peaches ;  but 
99 


THE   PACKERS,   THE   PRIVATE 

law  is  always  expensive  and  you  will  prob- 
ably save  money  by  going  yourself  to 
Indiana  now." 

The  grower  took  that  advice.  His 
peaches  had  reached  their  destination  on 
Friday ;  he  did  not  reach  there  until  Mon- 
day. Going  as  a  buyer  to  the  consignee 
firm  (its  members  did  not  know  him  per- 
sonally), he  found  some  of  his  own  peaches 
exposed  for  sale  in  fine  condition. 

"Got  one  hundred  and  fifty  crates  as 
good  as  those!"  he  asked,  indicating  pack- 
ages stenciled  with  his  own  name. 

' '  Sure, ' '  was  the  prompt  answer.  * '  We  Ve 
got  parts  of  two  cars  still  on  track— fine 
peaches  all  the  way  through.  Come  down 
and  see  'em." 

The  grower  accompanied  the  commission 
man,  saw  his  own  peaches  still  in  good  con- 
dition after  lying  on  a  side  track  nearly 
three  days,  and  then  told  his  name.  He 
was  paid,  without  discount  for  bad  con- 
dition. 

100 


CAR  LINES  AND   THE   PEOPLE 

A  final  word  of  testimony  from  the  car 
lines'  enemy — the  Fruit  Trade  Journal  is 
the  organ  of  the  commission  men  in  their 
fight  on  the  car  lines.  In  the  issue  of  Sep- 
tember 23,  1905,  forecasting  the  Michigan 
crop  situation  in  a  letter  from  St.  Joseph, 
Michigan,  that  paper  said: 

"It  is  now  evident  that  the  Michigan 
peach  crop  will  foot  up  six  million  bushels. 
.  .  .  The  marketing  of  fruit  in  southwest- 
ern Michigan  has  been  completely  revolu- 
tionized within  the  past  few  years.  There 
was  a  time  when  the  entire  crop  was  thrust 
upon  Chicago  and  Milwaukee,  and  the 
grower  suffered  materially  from  low  prices 
resulting  from  a  glutted  market.  Now  the 
fruit  belt,  from  the  beginning  of  straw- 
berries in  June  until  the  picking  of  the 
latest  apples  in  October,  is  the  Mecca  of 
fruit  buyers  from  every  part  of  the  country, 
and  the  refrigerator-car  and  steamboat  do 
the  rest. ' ' 

In  some  quarters  it  has  been  made  to 
101 


THE   PACKERS,   THE   PRIVATE 

appear  that  the  convenience  of  the  public 
is  deliberately  defied  and  made  to  suffer 
through  the  operation  of  the  private  freight- 
cars.  A  cunning  attempt  to  prejudice  the 
public  is  made  by  the  assertion  that  the 
railroads  are  so  subservient  to  the  Armour 
interests  that  they  sidetrack  passenger 
trains  to  let  trains  of  these  private  cars 
pass;  that  the  American  citizen  is  held  up 
on  a  switch  so  that  the  train  of  private 
freight-cars  may  have  the  right  of  way  and 
not  be  interrupted  in  the  work  of  earning 
mileage  for  a  rapacious  corporation. 

Now  it  may  be  a  fact  that  in  some  isolated 
instances  local  passenger  trains  have  been 
sidetracked  to  let  pass  a  through  freight 
containing  private  cars.  I  do  not  know  of 
such  an  instance,  but  it  is  possible  that  the 
exigencies  of  practical  railroad  operation 
might  have  brought  this  about  in  rare  in- 
stances, but  it  is  not  a  fact  that  this  sort  of 
occurrence  is  a  part  of  the  system  of  our 
operation  or  a  logical  result  of  it.  Is  there 
102 


CAR  LINES  AND  THE  PEOPLE 

any  reader  of  this  book  who  frequently 
travels  on  local  passenger  trains  who  has 
not,  at  some  time  or  other,  been  in  a  side- 
tracked coach  that  has  been  passed  by  a 
freight  train  made  up  of  cars  of  miscella- 
neous kind  and  ownership?  I  think  we 
have  all  had  that  experience.  Certainly 
the  experience  is  common  enough  to  render 
absurd  the  insinuation  that  the  railroads  of 
this  country  are  so  dominated  by  the 
Armour  or  any  other  private-car  lines  or 
packing  interests  that  they  make  a  practice 
of  giving  trains  of  such  cars  precedence 
over  their  passenger  service,  and  thereby 
subject  the  traveling  public  to  delay,  in- 
convenience, and  indignity.  Incidentally,  it 
may  be  said  that  the  slow  passenger  time 
from  Chicago  to  New  York  is  thirty  hours 
and  that  the  fastest  " private-freight"  time 
is  sixty  hours. 

However,  I  make  no  denial  of  the  fact 
that  the  private-car  service,  so  far,  at  least, 
as  the  Armour  lines  are  concerned— and  I 
103 


THE   PACKERS,   THE  PRIVATE 

am  willing  to  concede  as  much  to  com- 
peting lines — is  so  organized  that  its  cars 
are  not  permitted  to  lag  on  the  way,  to 
loiter  at  division-points,  or  in  any  way  to 
fail  in  delivering  their  cargoes  at  their 
destinations  in  the  shortest  possible  time 
consistent  with  sound,  safe,  and  reasonable 
railroad  operation.  In  other  words,  energy, 
diligence,  and  perseverance  are  used  in  a 
systematic  way  to  facilitate  the  transporta- 
tion of  fruits,  produce,  and  meats  as  quickly 
and  in  as  perfect  condition  as  may  be. 

The  perishable  nature  of  the  product  de- 
mands ' '  RUSH, ' '  and  it  is  believed  that  this 
is  distinctly  a  service  to  the  grower,  the 
shipper  using  the  cars,  and  to  the  public 
buying  the  fresh  fruits,  vegetables,  and 
meats  carried  in  them — a  service  that  needs 
no  apology.  If  the  "fast"  fruit  and  meat- 
car  service  were  allowed  suddenly  to  lapse 
and  fall  back  to  the  old-time  running  sched- 
ules, the  result  would  be  a  public  outcry 
and  protest  which  would  be  shared  in  by 
104 


CAR  LINES  AND  THE  PEOPLE 

the  very  people  who  are  now  sharpest  in 
their  criticism  of  the  ''fast"  private-freight 
trains,  and  which  would  astonish  the  entire 
public. 

Some  critics  of  the  private-car  system  are 
at  great  pains  to  create  the  impression  that 
the  mileage  which  the  railroads  pay  the 
owners  of  the  private  cars  as  rental  is  so 
large  that  there  should  be  no  charge  at  all 
to  the  shipper  for  refrigeration.  I  will  not 
ask  the  reader  to  accept  my  own  statement 
that  such  a  revenue  would  be  a  wholly 
inadequate  compensation,  but  I  will  refer 
to  the  testimony  of  a  practical  railroad 
man  not  interested  in  the  Armour  car  lines. 
Mr.  J.  S.  Leeds,  of  the  Santa  Fe,  made  this 
statement  under  oath : 

1 '  The  fact  of  the  business  is,  the  mileage 
that  a  car  earns  in  the  California  fruit 
business  will  not  maintain  it.  It  will  not 
pay  the  interest  on  its  cost  and  pay  for  ad- 
ministration expenses  of  the  organization 
and  the  replacements  out  of  the  mileage  that 
105 


THE   PACKERS,   THE   PRIVATE 

it  would  earn.  If  this  is  true  the  refrigera- 
tion of  these  commodities  should  pay  a 
profit  and  should  also  pay  its  share  of  the 
maintenance  and  the  expense  of  the  opera- 
tion of  the  line." 

It  should  be  noted  that  the  California 
business  gives  the  longest  haul,  the  most 
profitable  mileage  in  the  country. 

Sensational  periodicals  have  indulged  in 
much  and  violent  comment  regarding  the 
freight-rates  given  to  the  packers  on 
dressed  meats  and  other  packing-house 
products  as  compared  with  the  rates  on  live 
cattle,  contending  that  when  a  rate  on  prod- 
ucts as  low  or  lower  than  that  on  live  cattle 
is  given  a  natural  and  fundamental  law  of 
rate-making  is  controverted. 

More  than  this,  it  is  contended  that  such 
a  circumstance  is  prima  facie  evidence  that 
the  packers  have  a  dominant  and  "  monopo- 
listic" power  over  the  railroads  and  their 
freight-rates,  and  that  those  United  States 
statutes  known  as  the  Interstate  Commerce 
106 


CAB  LINES  AND  THE  PEOPLE 

Act  and  the  Elkins  Amendment  have  been 
violated.  This  matter  was  thoroughly 
tried  out  in  the  famous  "Cattle  Case" 
heard  by  Judge  Bethea  in  the  United  States 
Circuit  Court  sitting  at  Chicago. 

In  his  opinion,  filed  December  2,  1905, 
Judge  Bethea,  after  a  careful  consideration 
of  over  one  thousand  pages  of  testimony 
taken  before  the  Interstate  Commerce 
Commission,  and  about  three  thousand 
pages  of  testimony  taken  in  his  own  court, 
made  the  following  findings  of  facts: 

1 '  That  the  live-stock  rates  are  reasonable 
in  themselves;  these  rates  are  equal  to  or 
less  than  the  rates  on  dressed  meats  and 
packing-house  products  between  the  same 
points. 

"That  the  cost  of  carrying  live  stock  is 
greater  than  that  of  carrying  dressed  meats 
and  packing-house  products.  In  these 
cases,  as  to  the  particular  commodities  in 
question,  the  evidence  shows  that  the  de- 
107 


THE   PACKERS,   THE  PRIVATE 

f  endant  railroad  companies  pay  out  a  much 
larger  amount  in  damages  for  losses  arising 
from  the  carriage  of  live  stock  than  they  do 
for  losses  arising  from  the  carriage  of 
dressed  meats  and  packing-house  products, 
in  proportion  to  the  value  of  the  products 
carried,  and  more  in  damages  per  car  re- 
gardless of  the  value.  This  makes  the  risk 
of  carriage  greater  for  live  stock. 

"The  rates  in  question  given  to  the 
packers  at  Missouri  River  and  St.  Paul 
were  the  result  of  competition. 

"That  the  competition  in  question  did  not 
result  from  agreement  of  the  defendants, 
but  was  actual,  genuine  competition. 

"That  the  rates  for  carrying  packers' 
products  and  dressed  meats  were  remu- 
nerative. 

"That  the  welfare  of  the  public,  includ- 
ing the  shippers,  consumers,  and  all  local- 
ities and  markets,   does  not  seem  to  be 
materially  affected  by  the  present  rates." 
The  essential  finding  of  the  court  as  to  the 
108 


CAR  LINES  AND  THE  PEOPLE 

law  was  as  follows :  ' '  The  evidence  above 
shows  that  Section  1  has  not  been  violated 
— the  rates  were  not  unreasonable." 

Commenting  upon  this,  the  Chicago 
Legal  News  said:  " Judge  Bethea,  in  his 
opinion,  declares  that  the  prima  facie  case 
as  made  by  the  findings  of  the  Interstate 
Commerce  Commission  has  been  over- 
thrown by  the  evidence  taken  before  him." 

This  whole  contention  could  not  have 
been  more  thoroughly  thrashed  out  than 
in  this  trial,  which  lasted  a  month  and  in- 
volved examination  of  four  thousand  pages 
of  testimony.  The  finding  of  the  court 
should,  it  seems  to  me,  most  effectively 
settle  this  phase  of  the  controversy,  both 
as  to  the  facts  and  the  principles  involved. 


109 


THE  PACKERS,  THE  PRIVATE 
CHAPTER  V 

THE   PACKERS   AND   THE    CATTLEMEN 

LET  me  make  it  clear  that  no  one  ap- 
preciates more  than  myself  the  fact 
that  the  cattle  industry  and  the  pack- 
ing industry  arc  inseparable  in  their  for- 
tunes. The  one  cannot  prosper  at  the 
expense  of  the  other;  their  interests  are 
mutual,  not  to  say  identical.  If  the  cattle- 
man suffers  the  packer  must  suffer  with 
him,  and  if  the  cattleman  prospers  the 
packer  will  naturally  share  in  that  pros- 
perity. 

Broadly  speaking,  the  cattlemen  under- 
stand this  quite  as  well  as  do  the  packers. 
It  is  a  truism  to  say  that  without  cattle  the 
packer  could  not  do  business— beef  busi- 
ness. It  is  equally  true  that  without  the 
packing  and  dressed-beef  establishments 
the  cattle  market  would  be  small  and  un- 
110 


CAR  LINES  AND  THE  PEOPLE 

stable  compared  with  what  it  is  to-day. 
The  progressive  cattleman  will  not,  I 
think,  question  this  statement.  And  my 
purpose  is  not  to  tell  the  cattlemen  that 
packers  have  done  much  for  them— to  boast 
of  benefits  conferred.  Far  from  it.  The 
packers  have  done  only  what  progressive 
and  enlightened  self-interest  has  dictated, 
and,  for  one,  I  have  no  inclination  to  pose 
in  the  role  of  a  benefactor.  The  cattlemen 
would  be  fully  justified  in  sharply  resenting 
any  such  attitude.  This,  I  repeat,  is  en- 
tirely remote  from  my  real  feeling — quite 
as  remote  as  any  disposition  on  the  part  of 
the  cattlemen  to  assume  that  they  are  the 
benefactors  of  the  packers. 

But  the  sensational  magazines  have  per- 
sistently pounded  it  into  the  people  at  large 
that  the  cattlemen  and  the  packers  are  in  a 
perpetual  state  of  warfare;  that  their  in- 
terests are  antagonistic;  that  loss  or  hard- 
ship to  the  cattleman  must  spell  gain  and 
prosperity  to  the  packer ;  that  the  packer  is 
111 


THE   PACKERS,   THE   PRIVATE 

a  daylight  robber,  whose  destiny  is  to  prey 
upon  the  cattleman. 

This  malicious  misrepresentation  of  facts 
and  conditions  is  what  demands  a  plain  dis- 
cussion of  the  relations  between  the  cattle- 
men and  the  packers.  The  people  should 
know  whether  the  packers  are  robbing  the 
cattlemen  or  whether  they  are  pursuing  an 
industry  that  is  really  the  bottom  and  back- 
bone of  the  cattle  business.  And  the 
packers  have  a  right  that  the  public  should 
understand  the  situation.  Not  even  the 
possibility  that  some  cattlemen  may  mis- 
construe the  purpose  of  a  plain  statement 
of  the  advantages  which  the  packing  in- 
dustry incidentally  affords  the  cattle  busi- 
ness should  be  longer  permitted  to  stand 
as  a  bar  against  getting  at  the  root  of  this 
matter. 

Any  fair-minded  person  who  takes  even 
a  casual  survey  of  the  meat  business  will 
quickly  recognize  the  fact  that  it  was  revo- 
lutionized and  has  been  developed  to  its 
112 


CAB  LINES  AND  THE   PEOPLE 

present  immense  proportion  by  the  refrig- 
erator-car, the  modern  system  of  canning 
meats,  and  by  the  scientific  utilization  of 
by-products— all  of  which  are  the  fruits  of 
the  packers'  ingenuity  and  enterprise. 

One  of  the  results  of  these  elements  has 
been  the  establishment  of  a  cash  market  for 
every  kind  of  cattle  every  business  day  of 
every  year.  There  are  some  things  which 
become  so  firmly  established  that  familiar- 
ity with  their  routine  operation  has  a 
tendency  to  cause  their  acceptance  as  a  mat- 
ter of  course ;  they  are  so  near  and  so  com- 
monplace to  us,  so  unfailing  in  their 
operation,  that  we  come  to  regard  them  as 
existing  by  force  of  nature — "by  act  of 
God"  as  the  law  puts  it— that  we  lose  sight 
of  the  fact  that  they  were  not  always  so 
from  the  beginning  of  things. 

This,  I  think,  is  about  the  attitude  of  the 

average  man  towards  a  cash  cattle  market 

which  is  made  possible  by  the  operation  of 

the  great  packing  plants.    He  does  not  stop 

8  113 


THE   PACKERS,   THE  PRIVATE 

to  think  that  there  was  a  time  when  a  steer 
might  have  been  shipped  to  a  market  and 
without  promptly  finding  a  buyer— when,  in 
fact,  car-loads  of  cattle  were  shipped  to 
market  and  could  not  be  sold  for  cash; 
when  there  was  no  cash  market  ready  to 
take  the  shippers'  or  the  drovers'  cattle 
at  a  going  price  and  give  him  the  money 
for  them  right  on  the  call — and  without 
regard  to  the  kind  or  quality  of  his  offer- 
ings. 

Look  at  Chicago,  the  great  central  mar- 
ket: forty  thousand  cattle  is  not  by  any 
means  a  record  day  in  the  matter  of  re- 
ceipts. Is  it  not  a  marvel  that  this 
enormous  influx  of  cattle  could  be  disposed 
of — and  for  cash?  Is  it  not  a  wonder  that 
they  did  not  go  begging  and  simply  swamp 
the  buyers?  Could  this  task  have  been 
accomplished— or  anything  like  it— had  not 
the  great  packing-houses  been  here  to 
utilize  this  monster  herd  and  do  it  without 
delay?  The  official  report  of  the  Unio» 
114 


CAR  LINES  AND  THE   PEOPLE 

Stock  Yards  and  Transit  Company  of  Chi- 
cago states  that  this  market  handled,  in 
1905,  cattle  to  the  number  of  three  million, 
four  hundred  and  ten  thousand,  four  hun- 
dred and  sixty-nine,  and  to  the  value  of  one 
hundred  and  sixty-three  million,  nine  hun- 
dred and  forty-one  thousand,  six  hundred 
and  twelve  dollars ;  also  three  hundred  and 
eighty  thousand,  eight  hundred  and  thirty- 
five  calves,  valued  at  three,  million,  eight 
hundred  and  sixty-five  thousand,  four  hun- 
dred and  seventy-five  dollars.  It  is  true 
that  forty  per  cent,  of  the  cattle  received 
were  shipped  out,  but  the  remainder,  going 
mainly  to  the  packers,  is  so  immense  that 
the  importance  of  the  packing  industry  to 
this  central  cash  market  is  too  apparent  to 
need  argument.  And  remember  that  every 
market  is  a  spot  cash  market.  Hundreds 
of  millions  of  dollars  are  invested  by  the 
packers  in  this  industry,  which  is  really  a 
great  manufacturing  and  distributing  agent 
for  the  cattlemen. 

115 


THE   PACKERS,   THE   PRIVATE 

Not  only  have  the  packers  built  up  a 
great  central  cash  market,  but  they  have 
gone  out  to  meet  the  cattlemen  by  establish- 
ing subsidiary  markets  in  the  heart  of  the 
cattle-country.  These  outposts  of  the  pack- 
ing industry  have  had  their  advantages  to 
their  owners,  but  I  believe  they  have  carried 
still  greater  advantages  to  the  cattlemen. 

One  of  the  great  advantages  of  the  aux- 
iliary market  to  the  cattleman  is  the  fact 
that  it  shortens  his  haul  to  market.  This 
not  only  sometimes  means  a  saving  of 
freight,  but  the  avoiding  of  shrinkage  in 
weight  and  deterioration  in  quality.  It  also 
means  that  at  the  time  of  sharp  demand  he 
can  get  his  cattle  into  the  near  market  in 
time  to  realize  the  high  price,  while  he 
would  not,  perhaps,  be  able  to  rush  them 
into  the  distant  central  market  before  the 
extraordinary  demand  would  be  satisfied 
and  prices  drop  back  again. 

In  the  big  central  market  there  is 
naturally  a  larger  call  for  cattle  for  export 
116 


CAE  LINES  AND  THE  PEOPLE 

and  for  the  fancy  trade  demanding  choice 
cuts,  but  it  is  a  fact  that  all  grades  bring, 
in  the  auxiliary  markets,  prices  as  high  as 
they  do  in  the  central  market. 

Another  consideration  not  to  be  over- 
looked in  this  connection  is  the  fact  that  the 
subsidiary  market  has  immensely  influ- 
enced the  general  production  of  a  better 
quality  of  beef  by  facilitating  the  feeding 
or  "finishing"  of  cattle  brought  in  from  the 
ranges.  Named  in  about  the  order  of  their 
establishing,  the  principal  subsidiary  mar- 
kets developed  by  the  packers  are :  Kansas 
City,  South  Omaha,  East  St.  Louis,  St. 
Joseph,  Sioux  City,  South  St.  Paul,  and 
Fort  Worth.  The  extension  of  the  packing 
industry  to  these  points  has  changed  the 
agricultural  map  of  the  states  tributary  to 
these  auxiliary  markets,  making  them  the 
richest  feeding-grounds  in  the  country. 

The  farmers  of  these  regions  go  into  the 
near-by  markets  and  pick  up  herds  of  cattle 
brought  in  from  the  range,  take  them  to 
117 


THE   PACKERS,   THE  PRIVATE 

their  barns  and  pastures,  and  subject  them 
to  a  finishing  process  which  puts  them  into 
a  much  higher  class,  as  beef  animals,  than 
that  in  which  they  belonged  when  they  left 
the  range. 

Also  the  outpost  plants  of  the  packing 
industry  and  the  markets  created  and  main- 
tained by  them  have  immensely  stimulated 
the  breeding  of  fine  high-grade  cattle. 
There  is  scarcely  a  locality  in  the  Middle 
West  where  the  leading  farmer  has  not  his 
herd  of  fine  Herefords,  Shorthorns,  Aber- 
deen-Angus, or  Galloways,  and  who  is  not 
striving  to  increase  his  income  by  improv- 
ing the  quality  of  his  cattle.  This  means 
the  placing  of  more  and  more  good  beef  on 
the  market  year  after  year. 

Right  here  is  the  place  in  which  to  note 
the  effect  which  the  auxiliary  markets— 
and  the  central  market,  too,  for  that  matter 
—have  upon  the  growers  of  corn.  The 
feeding  of  beef-cattle  in  states  tributary  to 
118 


CAE  LINES  AND  THE  PEOPLE 

these  markets  has  greatly  influenced  the 
corn  market. 

B.  W.  Snow,  the  well-known  crop  expert, 
is  authority  for  the  statement  that  more 
than  eighty  per  cent,  of  the  corn  crop  of  this 
country  is  consumed  practically  upon  the 
farms  where  it  is  grown.  Or,  to  put  it  more 
exactly,  less  than  twenty  per  cent,  of  Amer- 
ica's corn  crop  is  moved  out  of  the  county 
in  which  it  is  produced.  When  it  is  remem- 
bered that  the  average  corn  crop  of  the 
United  States  is  two  and  one-half  billion 
bushels  annually,  the  extent  of  our  feeding 
operations  may  be  dimly  realized — but  only 
dimly,  for  the  figures  go  beyond  the  scope 
of  the  imagination  of  most  of  us. 

What  it  means  to  feed  more  than  two 
billion  bushels  of  corn  right  on  the  farm 
producing  the  crop  is  not  to  be  grasped 
without  some  analysis  and  consideration. 
For  one  thing,  it  means  that  the  farmers 
who  grow  and  feed  this  vast  volume  of  corn 
are  manufacturers  who  turn  out  a  finished 
119 


THE   PACKERS,   THE   PRIVATE 

product,  and  by  so  doing,  get  the  advan- 
tages and  benefits  of  by-product  utilization. 
This  is  just  what  the  packer  does ;  if  he  did 
not  do  it,  his  annual  balance  sheet  would 
make  a  sorry  showing  under  present  con- 
ditions. 

By  feeding  his  corn  right  on  the  ground 
where  it  is  grown,  the  farmer  retains  for 
the  enrichment  of  his  land  the  benefit  re- 
sulting from  the  animal  digestion  of  his 
crop — a  value  amounting  in  the  aggregate 
to  millions  of  dollars  a  year.  The  vast  ex- 
tent of  the  feeding  business  is  a  substantial 
testimony  to  its  profitableness — a  testimony 
so  convincing  that  additional  evidence  is 
scarcely  required.  Only  those  unfamiliar 
with  the  subject  or  who  come  to  it  with  a 
prejudice  will  dispute  the  flat  statement 
that,  generally  speaking,  the  growing  and 
feeding  of  corn  is  profitable  and  that  the 
main  element  in  the  prosperity  of  this 
branch  of  agriculture  is  the  packing  indus- 
try. If  the  business  of  killing  cattle,  hogs 
120 


CAB  LINES  AND  THE   PEOPLE 

and  sheep  was  in  the  undeveloped  stage  in 
which  it  was  when  the  evolution  of  the 
packing  industry  began,  would  our  western 
farmers  be  growing  two-and-a-half  billion 
bushels  of  corn  a  year  and  feeding  to  their 
own  stock  more  than  eighty  per  cent,  of  that 
crop?  I  do  not  think  any  reasonable  and 
intelligent  person  will  say  that  such  would 
be  the  case. 

The  fact  is,  that  nothing  short  of  the  vast 
and  highly  organized  packing  industry  as  it 
stands  to-day,  with  its  immense  capital  and 
its  immense  and  constant  demand  for  raw 
material,  could  sustain  so  great  an  agricul- 
tural business  as  that  of  the  combined  corn- 
growing  and  corn-feeding  industry.  In 
other  words,  if  the  farmer  could  not  sell  his 
stock  any  day  in  the  year  and  for  cash,  the 
present  development  of  corn  growing  and 
corn  feeding  would  be  impossible. 

When  it  comes  to  the  matter  of  our  for- 
eign trade,  the  dependence  of  the  corn- 
grower  upon  the  packing  industry  is  most 
121 


THE   PACKERS,   THE   PRIVATE 

clearly  apparent.  It  is  not  too  much  to  say 
that  our  large  export  trade  in  dressed  meats 
and  meat  products  is  due  wholly  to  the 
packers ;  but  of  this  I  shall  speak  in  greater 
detail  elsewhere. 

What  kind  of  farm  lands  has  shown  the 
greatest  advance  in  the  last  fifteen  years — 
the  period  in  which  the  packing  industry 
has  been  mainly  developed? 

Corn  lands!  In  that  time  the  average 
value  of  corn  lands  west  of  the  Allegheny 
Mountains  and  north  of  the  Ohio  River  has 
doubled,  broadly  speaking.  In  Illinois,  fif- 
teen years  ago,  sixty  dollars  an  acre  was  a 
good  price  for  corn  land ;  to-day  the  ruling 
price  is  from  one  hundred  and  twenty-five 
to  one  hundred  and  seventy-five  dollars.  In 
Iowa,  Nebraska  and  eastern  Kansas  the 
proportionate  advance  has  averaged  still 
greater. 

Every  year  this  nation  devotes  eighty 
million  acres  to  corn.  Our  national  corn- 
field is  larger  than  many  a  'European  king- 
122 


CAE  LINES  AND  THE   PEOPLE 

dom  which  looks  big  in  the  eyes  of  the 
world.  This  fact,  it  seems  to  me,  is  a  clear 
indication  that  the  business  of  manufactur- 
ing meat  on  the  farm  is  a  profitable  one 
and  that  the  packing  industry  has  fulfilled 
a  useful  service  in  furnishing  the  distrib- 
uting organization  for  putting  this  product 
into  the  markets  of  the  world. 

If  the  prop  of  the  feeding  business,  which 
rests  upon  the  packing  industry,  were  with- 
drawn, the  corn-producing  states  would  be 
dealt  a  blow  which  would  send  prices  down 
to  the  low  figures  which  prevailed  before 
the  feeding  business  was  developed  by  the 
packing  industry — prices  so  low  that  they 
now  sound  strange  and  almost  unbelievable. 
The  foundation  upon  which  the  great  cash 
corn  market  rests  is  the  feeding  of  cattle 
and  hogs,  and  this  great  branch  of  modern 
agriculture  is  almost  wholly  dependent 
upon  the  packing  industry,  as  that  term  is 
understood  in  its  broadest  sense.  Strike 
out  the  business  of  feeding,  and  the  farmer 
123 


THE   PACKERS,   THE   PRIVATE 

who  raises  corn  would  stagger  under  the 
weight  of  an  almost  hopeless  calamity. 

The  cry  of  " monopoly"  and  "combine" 
is  not  new — not  even  in  the  meat  and  cattle 
industry.  Not  a  man  would  to-day  deny 
that  the  establishment  of  the  Chicago  Union 
Stock  Yards,  taking  the  place  of  a  half- 
dozen  yards  scattered  all  over  Chicago,  was 
one  of  the  best  things  that  ever  happened 
to  the  live-stock  industry.  The  Union 
Stock  Yards  were  opened  Christmas  Day, 
1865.  Less  than  a  year  later— in  Novem- 
ber, 1866 — the  Prairie  Farmer  of  Chicago 
had  scented  a  " combine,"  and  proceeded 
to  expose  it  in  these  words : 

"A  mischievous  combination  of  buyers 
and  sellers  to  prevent  the  producer  from 
learning  correct  values  has  destroyed  pub- 
lic confidence  in  great  measure. 

"There  is  no  disguising  of  the  fact  that 
through  the  manipulation  of  a  few  unprin- 
cipled buyers  and  sellers  styling  themselves 
'the  board/  the  prestige  that  Chicago  has 
124 


CAE  LINES  AND  THE  PEOPLE 

heretofore  enjoyed  of  being  the  great  live- 
stock centre  of  the  great  northwest  is  fast 
slipping  from  her  grasp. 

"A  majority  of  dealers  in  the  country 
look  upon  the  great  Union  Stock  Yards  as 
a  market  where  swindlers  and  live-stock 
shysters  'most  do  congregate.'  A  reform 
is  needed.  The  public  demands  it,  and  un- 
less this  demand  is  heeded  the  combination 
on  the  Union  Stock  Yards  will  find  their 
occupation  gone. ' ' 

Yet  the  live-stock  industry  and  the  Union 
Stock  Yards  waxed  greater  in  spite  of  the 
"combine,"  handling  three  million,  four 
hundred  and  ten  thousand,  four  hundred 
and  sixty-nine  head  of  cattle,  worth  one 
hundred  and  sixty-three  million,  nine  hun- 
dred and  forty-one  thousand,  six  hundred 
and  twelve  dollars  in  1905,  as  against  four 
hundred  and  three  thousand,  one  hundred 
and  two  head  in  1869. 


125 


THE   PACKERS,    THE   PRIVATE 
CHAPTER  VI 

A   CAMPAIGN   OP   SLANDER 

THE  sensational  periodicals  have  the 
advantage  of  the  packers  in  their 
campaign  of  slander.  Human  na- 
ture is  such  that  an  attack  on  an  individual 
or  an  institution  always  helps  to  sell  the 
periodical  containing  it,  but  the  packers 
cannot  sell  their  meats  by  abusing  these 
publications  which  assail  them.  These 
magazines  have  the  further  advantage  of 
us  in  their  peculiar  character.  They  are 
constructed  not  for  the  careful,  but  for  the 
careless  reader.  They  are  written  and 
edited  with  one  thought  in  mind— to  pro- 
duce an  effect,  to  make  a  point  quickly,  to 
leave  with  the  hasty  reader  an  impression 
that  will  forward  the  purpose  of  the  pub- 
lisher, whether  that  purpose  be  political, 
sociological,  or  commercial.  Hence  it  comes 
126 


CAB  LINES  AND  THE  PEOPLE 

that  the  writers  and  editors  of  these  maga- 
zines have  borrowed  from  the  stage  a  form 
of  dramatic  license,  and  dress  up  their  lit- 
erary merchandise  to  produce  an  effect 
upon  the  reader,  just  as  the  playwright  ex- 
aggerates his  situations  and  the  actor 
resorts  to  the  exaggerations  of  "make-up" 
to  produce  an  effect.  These  assailants  of 
the  packing  industry  have  not  hesitated  to 
deal  in  half-truths  and  "cooked-up"  evi- 
dence, and  to  distort  and  juggle  plain  facts 
into  absolute  falsehoods. 

One  magazine  writer  employed  a  series 
of  cartoons — a  diminishing  series  of  pic- 
tures of  a  steer— to  show  how  the  price  of 
the  cattleman's  stock  has  been  crowded 
down  by  the  "trust"  since  1900.  He  care- 
fully omitted  a  representation  of  prices  in 
1902,  when  cattle-prices  were  at  the  highest 
point  ever  reached  in  twenty  years. 

The  same  writer,  with  much  use  of  black- 
face type  and  capital  letters,  set  forth  that 
"forty  Iowa  banks  were  forced  to  close 
127 


THE   PACKERS,   THE  PRIVATE 

their  doors"  in  1903-04.  The  statement 
was  so  framed  as  to  appear,  on  hasty  read- 
ing, as  if  the  Iowa  State  Auditor's  office 
was  authority  for  the  whole  statement 
instead  of  only  that  part  of  it  which  gave 
the  names  of  the  Iowa  banks  that  had  failed 
within  a  certain  period.  When  this  state- 
ment was  called  to  the  attention  of  the  Iowa 
State  Auditor's  office,  Chief  Clerk  Cox,  of 
the  Banking  Department,  denounced  it  as 
utterly  untrue,  tabulated  the  list  of  banks 
and  gave  the  reasons  for  each  failure,  which 
reasons  all  came  under  the  head  of  unwise 
speculations  and  reckless  banking  methods. 
Another  magazine  writer  stated— to  bolster 
up  the  allegation  that  the  "Beef  Trust" 
forces  the  railroads  to  discriminate  against 
others  and  in  favor  of  the  "trust"— that 
beef,  the  high-priced  product,  is  shipped  at 
eighteen  and  a  half  cents,  and  cattle,  a  low- 
priced  product,  shipped  at  twenty-three  and 
a  half  cents.  Movement  of  live  stock  and 
its  product,  or  packing-house  products, 
128 


CAR  LINES  AND  THE   PEOPLE 

from  the  Missouri  River  points  to  Chicago 
is  referred  to. 

The  above  statement,  though  technically 
true,  is  entirely  misleading.  While  some 
of  the  railroads  publish  a  local  rate  of 
twenty-three  and  a  half  cents  on  live  stock 
from  Missouri  River  to  Chicago,  less  than 
one  per  cent,  or  practically  none  of  the 
business  is  moved  under  this  rate.  Live 
stock  from  Missouri  River  points  come  in 
there  from  the  West,  and  all  of  such  busi- 
ness, when  reshipped  to  Chicago,  takes  the 
proportional  rate,  varying  from  thirteen  to 
seventeen  cents  per  hundredweight  from 
Missouri  River  to  Chicago,  so  that,  in  fact, 
the  live  stock  is  carried  at  a  less  rate  per 
hundredweight  than  the  product. 

The  local  rate  on  the  "product"  from 
Missouri  River  to  Chicago  is  also  twenty 
cents  per  hundredweight  instead  of  eight- 
een and  a  half  cents,  although  the  propor- 
tional rate  on  the  product  from  the 
Missouri  River  to  Chicago  on  shipments 
9  129 


consigned  through  to  eastern  points  is 
eighteen  and  a  half  cents. 

One  more  incident:  When  known  corn 
conditions  foreshadowed  very  high  prices 
for  cattle,  a  Chicago  paper  printed  an 
analysis  of  conditions  and  a  forecast  of 
consequences  —  higher-priced  cattle  and 
higher-priced  beef —as  a  part  of  its  regular 
market  report  away  in  the  back  pages  of 
the  paper.  That  article  was  written  by  a 
market  expert  as  a  reflection  of  market 
facts,  to  be  read  and  judged  by  men  in  the 
business,  most  of  whom  knew  the  facts.  A 
little  later,  when  the  conditions  outlined  in 
the  market  report  were  commencing  to 
work  and  prices  began  to  go  up,  the  same 
paper  printed  a  sensational  article  on  its 
first  page  relating  how  the  "Beef  Trust" 
was  putting  up  the  prices  of  the  poor  man's 
food. 

The  dressed-beef  and  packing  industry 
is  not  in  the  hands  of  a  "monopoly  com- 
bine, ' '  never  has  been  in  the  hands  of  such 
130 


CAE  LINES  AND  THE  PEOPLE 

a  "combine, "  and  never  will  be.    It  cannot 
become  a  "monopoly." 

The  business  of  the  packers  is  not  shel- 
tered by  tariff  nor  builded  upon  patents  of 
secret  processes.  Their  raw  material  is 
not  to  be  gathered  from  the  bosom  of  the 
earth  at  no  cost  beyond  the  mere  expense 
of  extracting  it.  Armour  &  Co.  do  not  own 
or  control  the  sources  of  their  raw  material, 
and  are  not  even  interested  a  dollar's 
worth  in  the  production  of  raw  material, 
and  I  do  not  think  any  of  the  packers  are 
so  interested  to  any  extent.  They  do  not 
own  or  control  the  transportation  avenues 
over  which  the  raw  material  comes  to 
market.  They  do  not,  or  could  not  if  they 
would,  control  the  means  of  distribution  to 
the  consumer,  because  this  product  goes, 
not  to  comparatively  a  few  large  users,  but 
to  each  family  individually  that  helps  to 
make  up  the  total  of  millions  on  millions 
of  eaters  of  American  meat  on  this  conti- 
nent and  throughout  the  world. 
131 


THE   PACKERS,   THE   PRIVATE 

Without  control  of  some,  or  at  least  of 
one,  of  the  commercial  instrumentalities 
mentioned  no  industry  can  be  monopolized. 
Consider  a  further  bar  against  monopoliz- 
ing it:  the  kind  of  food  it  deals  in  can 
be  produced,  made  merchantable,  and  dis- 
tributed to  the  consumer  in  each  state,  each 
county,  and  each  township  of  the  entire 
United  States— and  many  other  countries 
as  well.  Every  farmer  cannot  find  an  oil- 
well  or  a  deposit  of  iron-ore  in  his  back 
pasture-lot,  because  Nature  has  planted 
them  only  at  rare  intervals,  and  he  cannot 
grow  sugar-beets  in  every  field,  because 
sugar-beets  require  a  peculiar  character  of 
soil ;  but  every  person  who  owns  a  little  land 
that  is  not  absolutely  barren  can  engage,  to 
some  degree,  in  meat  production,  and  al- 
most every  man  who  has  a  knife  and  a  saw 
can  engage  in  the  slaughtering  business. 

In  the  language  of  the  United  States 
Census  report  of  1900:  "The  process  of 
converting  live  stock  into  food  for  human 
132 


CAB  LINES  AND  THE  PEOPLE 

consumption  is  an  industry  which,  directly 
and  indirectly,  furnishes  employment  to  a 
considerable  portion  of  the  United  States, 
and  sustenance  to  all." 

The  industry  of  the  packers  is  dependent 
upon  supply  and  demand  to  a  degree  that 
prevails  in  no  other  large  industry.  If  it 
were  of  less  magnitude  it  might  be  fittingly 
called  a  hand-to-mouth  business.  It  is, 
broadly  speaking,  a  manufacturing  busi- 
ness, and  one  that  in  some  respects  is  more 
hazardous  than  any  other. 

The  general  run  of  manufacturers  of  any 
considerable  size  handle  raw  materials 
which  are  not  perishable  in  the  usual  sense 
of  the  term.  Even  when  their  raw  mate- 
rials are  perishable  they  become  less  so,  if 
not  practically  imperishable,  as  soon  as 
passed  through  the  manufacturing  process. 

The  packer  uses  a  material  that  is  quite 
perishable,  and  a  large  part  of  his  finished 
product — fresh  meats — is  highly  perish- 
able ;  so  he  is  taking  risk  at  both  ends  of  his 
133 


THE   PACKERS,   THE   PRIVATE 

business.  He  cannot  " scalp  the  market" 
or  " discount  the  future,"  take  advantage 
of  a  temporary  market  condition  and  load 
up  with  raw  material  to  be  manufactured 
at  his  leisure  and  at  a  great  profit;  nor 
can  he,  when  the  demand  slumps,  continue 
to  run  his  plant  and  store  up  finished  prod- 
uct against  the  day  of  higher  prices. 

The  "frozen  cuts"  of  beef  furnish  the 
only  exception  to  this  statement,  and  they 
amount  to  only  about  two  per  cent,  of  the 
finished  product.  And  this  frozen-cut  busi- 
ness is  of  distinct  advantage  to  the  cattle- 
man because  it  enables  the  packers  to  take 
care  of  the  immense  floods  of  cattle  which 
come  in  from  the  ranges  in  the  fall  of  the 
year.  From  day  to  day,  almost  literally, 
his  purchases  of  raw  material  and  his  sale 
of  finished  product  must  balance.  His 
profit,  if  he  make  any,  must  come  from 
stopping  every  leak,  saving  waste,  and  turn- 
ing his  money  over  rapidly  at  a  small 
134 


CAB  LINES  AND  THE  PEOPLE 

margin  of  profit  on  a  large  volume  of  busi- 
ness. 

The  industry  exemplifies  the  ideal  busi- 
ness theory  of  "quick  returns  and  small 
profit. ' '  It  gathers  the  product  of  the  mil- 
lions of  small  producers  throughout  the 
Western  Empire  stretching  from  the  Alle- 
ghenies  to  the  Rocky  Mountains,  converts 
their  product  into  merchantable  commodi- 
ties, and  distributes  them  to  the  consumers 
of  the  whole  round  world.  For  the  service 
it  performs  it  is  none  too  well  paid  in  the 
profit  it  makes— an  average  of  less  than 
two  per  cent,  on  the  volume  of  business 
handled. 

To  all  practical  purposes,  the  packer  is 
the  agent  of  the  cattleman,  handling  his  cat- 
tle, as  the  official  report  of  Commissioner 
Garfield  says,  for  an  average  fee  of  ninety- 
nine  cents  a  head.  This  vast  distributing 
agency  is  as  readily  at  the  command  of 
the  man  who  has  a  herd  of  ten  or  a  hundred 
cattle  as  the  man  whose  herd  numbers  a 
135 


THE   PACKERS,   THE   PRIVATE 

hundred  thousand— and  on  precisely  the 
same  terms,  too.  But  in  one  respect  this 
way  of  looking  at  the  packer  as  agent  or 
commission  man  acting  for  the  cattleman  is 
inadequate — for  the  packer  pays  cash 
every  day  in  the  year.  He  does  business 
strictly  upon  his  own  capital  and  pays  "at 
the  drop  of  the  whip.'* 

The  character  of  the  packing  business,  I 
repeat,  and  the  wide  distribution  of  it  pre- 
clude making  it  the  property  of  a  monopoly. 
The  business  methods,  practices,  and  neces- 
sities pertaining  to  it  are  a  further  bar 
against  monopoly. 

On  one  side  stands  the  cattle-grower.  He 
has  absolute  control  of  his  product.  He 
can  ship  to  market  to-day  if  he  will,  or 
he  can  wait  a  day,  a  week,  a  month,  in  or- 
dinary cases,  without  much  risk. 

The  packer  looks  to  him  for  raw  material 
— live  stock — and  cannot  get  it  until  it 
comes  to  market. 

On  the  other  side  stands  the  retailer  of 
136 


CAB  LINES  AND  THE   PEOPLE 

meats.  His  is  a  from-day-to-day  business. 
He  buys  only  as  the  demand  tells  him  to 
buy.  The  packer  must  market  his  finished 
product  through  the  retailer.  He  cannot 
force  or  induce  him  to  buy  one  pound  more 
than  he  wants  to  buy.  Between  these  two 
commercial  factors  stands  the  packer.  He 
must  do  all  the  guessing  at  both  ends  of  the 
line.  If  he  does  not  buy  cattle  fast  enough, 
the  demand  from  the  retailer  outruns  his 
supply  and  he  loses  the  business.  If  he 
buys  too  many  cattle  he  must  hold  them 
at  heavy  expense  (for  he  is  without  facili- 
ties for  storing  cattle)  or  convert  them  into 
meat  for  which  there  is  no  demand,  and 
run  the  risk  of  having  it  spoil  on  his  hands. 
It  is  up  to  the  packer  correctly  to  judge 
the  balance  between  the  supply  and  the 
demand.  Thus  each  day's  business  be- 
comes a  separate  business.  He  cannot 
know,  his  buyers  cannot  know,  when  the 
cattle  market  opens  on  any  given  morning, 
what  the  market  for  that  day  will  be  or 
137 


ought  to  be.  He  and  his  buyers  may  know, 
in  a  general  way,  what  the  market  and 
prospects  for  meats  are,  based  on  the  day 
before,  but  each  day's  cattle  market  is  a 
new  market  with  a  new  lot  of  cattle,  re- 
sembling in  no  way,  perhaps,  the  cattle  of 
the  day  before. 

No  combination  that  could  be  formed 
would  serve  to  keep  a  "Beef  Trust"  ad- 
vised of  the  character  or  number  of  cattle 
coming  into  market  on  any  one  day  from 
all  points  of  the  compass.  Yesterday  may 
have  brought  a  heavy  run  of  choice  beeves. 
To-day's  receipts  may  be  common.  To- 
morrow cows  may  predominate.  The 
packers  have  no  advance  information,  and 
their  cattle-buyers  have  only  general  in- 
structions as  to  the  needs  of  the  house  for 
that  day.  They  exercise  their  wits  and 
their  judgment,  buy  as  closely  and  as  care- 
fully as  they  can,  drawing  the  line  between 
buying  too  much  and  too  little.  They 
draw  that  line  very  fine.  Their  jobs  de- 
138 


CAR  LINES  AND  THE  PEOPLE 

pend  upon  it,  and  that  is  the  whole  mystery 
of  cattle-buying. 

The  cattle  market  at  Chicago,  Kansas 
City,  South  Omaha,  and  everywhere  else  is 
an  open  market.  Every  buyer  of  cattle  in 
a  market,  whether  buying  for  a  packer,  for 
reshipment  East  or  across  the  water,  or  for 
his  individual  account  as  a  feeder  or  specu- 
lator, stands  on  absolutely  even  terms  with 
every  other  buyer.  The  competition  is  such 
that  almost  every  good  bunch  of  cattle  will 
draw  out  several  bids,  instead  of  the  one 
bid  the  " trust"  exploiters  allege. 

Large  packers  will  not  deny  that  they 
can  slaughter,  pack,  work  up  by-products, 
and  sell  to  better  advantage  than  some  of 
their  smaller  competitors.  Each  packer 
thinks  he  can  do  all  that  better  than  any 
other  packer.  If  he  did  not  think  so  there 
would  be  little  excuse  for  his  remaining 
in  the  business.  Every  merchant  thinks  he 
is,  in  some  particular,  a  better  merchant 
139 


THE   PACKERS,   THE   PRIVATE 

than  his  competitor.  That  is  why  he  is  a 
merchant. 

If  a  packer  ever  buys  cattle  to  better  ad- 
vantage than  his  competitor,  it  is  because 
his  cattle-buyer  is  a  better  judge  of  cattle 
than  his  competitor 's  buyer,  and  that  brings 
in  the  personal  equation— one  man's  brains 
and  judgment  against  another  man's — and 
that  cannot  be  governed  by  a  monopoly. 

The  cattle  market,  I  repeat,  is  an  open 
market,  and  no  person  who  has  even  a 
chance  acquaintance  with  a  cattle  market 
in  action  will  venture  to  suggest  that  any 
packer  or  group  of  packers  can  "take  his 
pick"  or  buy  any  particular  bunch  of  cattle 
cheaper  than  the  smaller  buyer  in  the  mar- 
ket. If  that  were  to  happen  you  would 
hear  a  roar  of  protests  from  buyers  and 
from  cattlemen  alongside  which  the  present 
cry  against  the  "Beef  Trust"  would  be 
tame  and  flat. 

There  is  no  cleaner  competition  any- 
where than  among  the  cattle-buyers  on  the 
140 


CAB  LINES  AND  THE  PEOPLE 

live-stock  market.  This  competition,  to- 
gether with  the  marketing  methods  fol- 
lowed, automatically  regulates  the  market, 
keeps  it  an  open  market,  and  prevents  con- 
trol of  it  by  any  ' '  combine. ' '  To  make  this 
clear,  let  us  look  into  the  ways  this  selling 
and  buying  of  cattle  is  carried  on. 

The  buyers  in  the  market  at  the  Union 
Stock  Yards  of  Chicago— leaving  out  buy- 
ers of  feeder  cattle — may  be  classed  as 
buyers  for  the  large  packing-houses,  buyers 
for  the  smaller  packers  and  slaughterers, 
buyers  for  shipment  to  the  seaboard  and 
to  the  Old  World,  buyers  for  speculators. 
These  different  classes  of  buyers  have 
nothing  in  common.  They  are  always  at 
war,  commercially  speaking. 


141 


THE   PACKERS,   THE   PRIVATE 
CHAPTER  VH 

CATTLE  AND  CATTLE  MARKETS 

THE  packers  are  always  in  the  market 
for  cattle.  They  have  large  plants, 
which  if  allowed  to  lie  idle  do  so  at 
great  loss.  As  long  as  they  pay  the  top 
price — always  with  an  eye  to  the  selling 
market  for  the  product  on  the  other  side  of 
the  slaughter-house— they  get  their  choice 
of  the  cattle.  But  if  buyers  for  the  large 
packers  should  combine  to  depress  prices, 
what  would  happen?  The  moment  prices 
went  to  a  point  that  promised  a  little  extra 
profit  on  the  slaughtered  product,  the  buyer 
for  small  packers,  for  shipment,  and  for 
speculation,  would  sweep  the  market,  and 
back  prices  would  go  over  the  heads  of  a 
badly  rattled  " combine." 

There  may  be  an  impression  that  the  buy- 
ing capacity  of  all  except  representatives 
142 


CAB  LINES  AND  THE  PEOPLE 

of  the  large  packers  is  too  limited  to  have 
much  effect  on  the  market.  The  best  an- 
swer to  that  lies  in  the  official  figures.  In 
1904  the  receipts  of  cattle  at  the  Chicago 
Union  Stock  Yards  were  three  million,  two 
hundred  and  fifty-nine  thousand,  one  hun- 
dred and  eighty-five  head ;  of  these  one  mil- 
lion, three  hundred  and  twenty-six  thousand, 
three  hundred  and  thirty-two  head  were 
reshipped — to  feeders,  the  seaboard  pack- 
ers, to  Buffalo,  Cleveland,  Cincinnati, 
Pittsburg,  Indianapolis,  other  cities,  and  to 
Europe.  During  1905  receipts  were  three 
million,  one  hundred  and  eleven  thousand 
and  twenty-nine,  and  the  shipments  were 
one  million,  four  hundred  and  five  thousand, 
seven  hundred  and  eight.  Thus  more  than 
forty  per  cent,  of  the  cattle  received  were 
bought  for  shipment. 

It  is  important  to  remember  in  this  con- 
nection the  fact  that  there  is  not  a  slaugh- 
tering establishment  in  this  country  that  is 
regularly  run  at  its  full  capacity.  See  what 
143 


THE   PACKERS,    THE   PRIVATE 

this  means  so  far  as  the  control  of  the  cat- 
tle market  by  any  "combine"  is  concerned. 
The  instant  cattle  prices  became  depressed 
so  that  there  was  an  attractive  margin,  the 
smaller  packers  and  killers  would  jump  in, 
get  the  cattle,  and  kill  extensively.  There 
are  hundreds  of  these  smaller  houses  which 
make  a  business  of  waiting  upon  the  turns 
of  the  market  for  the  hour  of  opportunity, 
killing  at  certain  times  two,  three,  and  four 
times  as  many  cattle  as  they  do  when  prices 
rule  above  a  certain  low  point. 

If  the  packers  could  regulate  the  cattle 
market  they  would  prefer  to  have  a  steady 
market  with  an  even  inflow  of  cattle— about 
the  same  number  each  day.  Their  profits 
depend  upon  the  rapid  turning  of  the 
money  invested,  upon  shortening  as  much 
as  possible  the  period  between  the  moment 
when  steers  arrive  and  the  time  when  their 
beef  is  sold.  When  their  plants  lie  idle  they 
lose.  Every  manufacturer's  aim  is  to  keep 
his  plant  in  even  and  continuous  operation. 
144 


CAR  LINES  AND  THE  PEOPLE 

Right  here  it  should  be  remembered  that 
the  large  packer  must  have,  every  day,  a 
certain  amount  of  high-grade  cattle.  The 
only  way  he  can  get  this  is  to  go  into  the 
market  when  it  opens.  If  he  were  to  hang 
back  he  would  get  left  on  this  imperative 
material;  he  would  get  only  the  "tail 
ends."  His  only  protection  in  this  partic- 
ular is  to  buy  early.  The  sort  of  buying 
methods  attributed  to  "trust  buyers" 
would  leave  him  in  the  lurch  on  this  score. 

An  important  chapter  in  any  compre- 
hensive history  of  the  development  of  the 
cattle  business  would  be  the  chapter  on  cat- 
tle loan  companies.  These  companies  as- 
sisted to  develop  and  stimulate  and  make 
a  business  of  cattle-raising  in  a  measure 
difficult  to  overestimate.  Among  the  first 
one  of  these  was  the  Omaha  Cattle  Loan 
Company,  organized  nine  years  ago  by 
Thomas  B.  McPherson.  The  packers 
backed  it  with  their  money  and  credit  as 
they  backed  others  at  Omaha,  Kansas  City, 
10  145 


THE   PACKERS,   THE   PRIVATE 

St.  Joseph,  and  Chicago — for  selfish  rea- 
sons, of  course. 

These  loan  companies,  managed  by  men 
who  knew  cattle,  made  a  specialty  of  loan- 
ing money  on  cattle,  and  thus  put  life  into 
the  industry.  Before  their  time,  cattle- 
raising  on  a  large  scale  was  practically 
closed  to  the  man  of  small  capital.  The 
local  banks,  where  there  were  banks,  were 
too  weak  to  take  the  risk ;  but  with  the  cattle 
loan  companies  in  business  the  capable  cat- 
tlemen were  able  to  go  into  the  business 
on  a  large  scale.  These  companies  helped 
develop  the  growing  of  higher-grade  stock. 
An  idea  of  the  importance  of  this  feature 
may  be  gathered  from  the  fact  that  the 
Omaha  concern  loaned  ten  million  dollars 
annually  almost  entirely  on  ranch  and 
feeder  cattle. 

True,  these  companies  are  all  out  of 
business  now — put  out  by  two  causes.  En- 
forcement of  the  no-fence  law  by  the  United 
States  government  has  made  loaning  on 
146 


CAB  LINES  AND  THE  PEOPLE 

large  herds  extra  hazardous.  Then  the 
prosperity  of  the  West,  to  which  the  cattle 
business,  stimulated  by  the  cattle  loan  com- 
panies, has  contributed  no  small  share,  has 
filled  the  local  banks  with  money  and  has 
enabled  the  local  banker  to  loan  the  money 
on  cattle  that  used  to  come  from  these  cat- 
tle loan  companies. 

Now  consider  recent  low  prices.  Natural 
causes  have  continued  to  hold  cattle  prices 
down  with  the  break  of  1903.  Chief  among 
these  causes  has  been  the  breaking  up  of 
the  big  western  and  northwestern  range 
herds  consequent  upon  enforcement  of  the 
no-fence  law  by  the  United  States  govern- 
ment. 

Since  the  buffalo  gave  way  to  the  steer 
on  the  western  plains  in  the  late  seventies, 
a  considerable  proportion  of  the  beef -cattle 
supply  has  come  from  the  western  ranges. 
As  the  packing  industry  developed  and,  by 
making  an  assured  market,  converted 
range-cattle-raising  from  an  adventure 
147 


THE   PACKERS,   THE  PRIVATE 

into  a  settled  business,  the  cattlemen 
learned  that  it  was  better  to  fence  the 
ranges  than  to  herd  the  cattle  on  the  open 
plains. 

All  around  him  in  Montana,  western 
Nebraska,  Wyoming,  Colorado,  Idaho,  and 
the  Dakotas  were  millions  of  acres  of  grass- 
land fit  for  nothing  but  cattle-grazing,  and 
fit  for  that  only  where  water  could  be  had. 
By  acquiring  ownership  of  a  small  tract 
surrounding  or  adjacent  to  a  water-supply, 
he  could  practically  control  thousands  or 
millions  of  acres  surrounding  him.  If  it 
was  public  land  he  used  it  for  nothing.  If 
it  was  Indian  Reservation  land  he  rented 
it  for  a  cent  or  a  fraction  of  a  cent  an  acre 
a  year.  With  a  barbed-wire  fence  he  could 
inclose  what  he  needed  and  go  into  the  cat- 
tle business  on  a  large  scale. 

A  few  years  ago  the  United  States  gov- 
ernment began  to  enforce  the  law  against 
fencing  these  lands.  The  range  cattle- 
man has  not  found  and  cannot  find  a  substi- 
148 


CAR  LINES  AND  THE  PEOPLE 

tute  for  the  fenced  range  of  which  he  has 
been  dispossessed.  Without  fences  his  herds 
cannot  be  kept  together.  This  increase  in 
the  hazard  of  the  range-cattle  business  has 
made  this  class  of  cattle  a  poorer  loan  risk. 
Loans  have  been  withdrawn,  thus  imposing 
an  additional  burden  upon  the  cattleman. 
Therefore  he  has  bowed  to  the  inevitable 
and  has  broken  up  his  herds. 

Some  of  the  cattle  from  range  herds  so 
dispersed  have  found  a  market  among  west- 
ern feeders,  but  the  bulk  of  them  have 
come  to  market  and  have  been  sent  to  the 
slaughter-houses.  Then,  too,  the  wonder- 
ful abundance  of  grass  helped  to  make  1905 
almost  a  record  year  in  the  number  of  cat- 
tle sent  to  market.  The  West,  from  Texas 
to  Canada,  has  been  literally  a  garden  as 
to  pasturage. 

These  cattle  have  been  a  weight  on  the 

market  for  the  past  two  years.    During 

1905  three  hundred  and  eighty  thousand 

head  of  range  cattle  were  marketed  in  Chi- 

149 


THE   PACKERS,   THE   PRIVATE 

cago  alone — a  larger  number  than  was  ever 
received  in  this  market  during  a  similar 
period  except  in  1894.  At  all  the  market 
points  for  western  cattle  the  receipts  will 
total  about  three-quarters  of  a  million  head. 

Very  many  of  the  big  range  herds  have 
already  been  broken  up.  Nineteen  hun- 
dred and  six  will,  I  think,  see  fewer  range 
cattle  in  the  market  than  in  1905,  and  the 
year  after  still  fewer.  If  one  were  in  a  pro- 
phetic mood  he  might  say  that  these  condi- 
tions will  produce,  in  a  few  years,  much 
higher-priced  cattle  and  consequently  high- 
er-priced beef.  We  shall  continue  to  raise 
beef-cattle  in  this  country,  but  at  greater 
expense. 

It  has  taken,  on  the  range,  ten  to  twenty 
acres  to  produce  a  steer,  but  these  acres 
cost  practically  nothing,  and  the  steers  made 
good  beef.  Sometimes  they  competed  with 
choice  fed  steers  for  the  export  trade. 
Fewer  acres  will  produce  a  steer  on  a  west- 
ern farm,  but  acres,  many  or  few,  will  rep- 
150 


CAB  LINES  AND   THE  PEOPLE 

resent  much  money — five  dollars  to  one 
hundred  dollars  an  acre — invested  in  the 
bare  land,  and  that  will  mean  a  costlier 
steer. 

Sheep  prices  are  now  high— very  high. 
There  is  a  big  demand  for  both  mutton  and 
wool,  and  the  supply  does  not  keep  pace 
with  it.  Hog  prices  have  averaged  very 
high  for  a  period  covering  the  past  four 
years.  Now,  the  handling  of  hogs  is  almost 
as  big  a  part  of  the  packers'  business  as  is 
the  killing  of  cattle— and  the  sheep  depart- 
ment is  not  much  behind  either  of  these 
branches.  If  all  the  packers,  or  any  of 
them,  were  in  a  combine  to  depress  prices, 
why  should  they  neglect  sheep  and  hogs? 
To  do  this  would  be  to  fall  far  short  of  the 
business  shrewdness  with  which  their  ene- 
mies credit  them. 

In  the  last  few  years  raisers  of  sheep  and 
hogs  have  universally  made  great  profits, 
while  the  cattlemen  have  suffered  to  a  con- 
siderable extent— and  all  because  of  nat- 
151 


THE   PACKERS,   THE   PRIVATE 

ural  conditions  wholly  beyond  the  control 
of  the  packers.  The  cattle  business  has 
been  in  a  transitional  condition — the  sub- 
ject of  fundamental  changes  which  have 
thrown  immense  numbers  of  cattle  on  the 
market  and  forced  a  period  of  low  prices. 
This  is  the  whole  story. 

Sober-minded  men  never  would  cry 
"monopoly"  in  relation  to  the  business  of 
the  packers  if  they  understood  that  busi- 
ness. TVhile  the  meat  industry  is  probably 
the  largest  in  the  country,  it  is  less  known 
than  many  of  far  less  consequence.  Its 
character  and  magnitude  have  never  been 
comprehensively  presented  to  the  public. 
A  comprehensive  and  authoritative  com- 
pendium of  this  industry  is  to  be  found 
nowhere  outside  of  government  reports. 
Unfortunately  for  a  clear  understanding 
of  many  questions  of  public  moment,  {hese 
reports  are  not  popular  and  widely-read  lit- 
erature compared  with  the  "best  sellers'* 
of  the  book-stores.  The  last  census  figures 
152 


CAR  LINES  AND  THE  PEOPLE 

are  now  five  years  old,  of  course— the  facts 
they  express  are  still  "new"  to  a  majority 
of  the  people— but  because  they  are  the 
only  official  figures  extant  they  will  be  used 
to  illustrate  points  in  this  article.  The 
conditions  they  reflect  still  hold  in  the 
main.  Any  changes  that  might  be  made  in 
them  would  strengthen  rather  than  weaken 
the  packers'  case. 

This  alleged  "Beef  Trust"  cannot  be 
seriously  regarded  as  monopolizing  the 
dressed-beef  and  packing  industry  in  the 
face  of  official  government  figures,  backed 
by  the  investigation  recently  made  under 
Mr.  Garfield,  Chief  of  the  Bureau  of  Cor- 
porations of  the  Department  of  Commerce. 
It  is  admitted  now,  even  by  most  of  its  crit- 
ics, that  the  so-called  ' '  Beef  Trust ' '  handles 
less  than  fifty  per  cent,  of  the  beef  and 
packing  industry  of  the  country.  This  is 
the  statement  in  Mr.  Garfield 's  report,  and, 
as  will  be  shown  later,  that  the  industry 
holds  this  moiety  of  the  business  only  by 
153 


THE   PACKERS,    THE   PRIVATE 

the  advantages  of  foresight,  superior  or- 
ganization, and  superior  business  methods. 
But  these  advantages  are  not  enough  to 
give  such  a  " combine"  a  monopoly  of  the 
dressed-beef  and  meat-packing  industry. 

The  industry  is  too  widely  distributed,  is 
too  deeply  rooted  in  too  many  widely  sep- 
arated localities  to  be  monopolized.  With- 
out having  analyzed  the  figures  in  this  ex- 
press relation,  I  feel  safe  in  asserting  that 
the  packing  industry  holds  a  higher  rela- 
tive position  as  to  value  of  product  in  more 
states  and  cities  than  any  other  industry 
in  the  country. 

There  were,  in  1900,  nine  hundred  and 
twenty-one  meat-packing  establishments  in 
the  United  States.  This  figure  did  not  in- 
clude establishments  that  slaughtered  only : 
those  were  classified  separately  in  the  cen- 
sus reports  of  1900 ;  it  included  only  those 
that  both  slaughtered  and  performed  the 
other  functions  classed  under  the  head  of 
packing  and  utilization  of  by-products,  and 
154 


CAB  LINES  AND   THE   PEOPLE 

there  were  nine  hundred  and  twenty-one  of 
them. 

These  packing-houses  were  distributed 
among  forty-two  of  the  forty-nine  states 
and  territories  and  the  District  of  Colum- 
bia. All  of  these  states  except  nine  had 
three  or  more  packing-houses.  In  twenty- 
six  of  them  the  industry  amounted,  back  in 
1900,  to  more  than  one  million  dollars  each 
annually. 

This  industry  ranked  first  among  manu- 
facturing industries  in  value  of  product  in 
each  of  six  states — Illinois,  Indiana,  Iowa, 
Kansas,  Missouri,  and  Nebraska.  In  Cali- 
fornia it  ranked  second  only  to  sugar-refin- 
ing. Maryland — never  thought  of  as  a 
meat-packing  state — gave  it  fourth  place, 
as  did  Minnesota,  Oregon,  and  Washing- 
ton. It  held  seventh  place  or  higher — prob- 
ably much  higher  now — in  widely  different 
states,  each  having  several  specialties — 
New  York,  Ohio,  Kentucky,  Rhode  Island, 
Texas,  and  Wisconsin.  Does  that  look  as  if 
155 


THE   PACKERS,    THE   PRIVATE 

it  were  a  monopoly  confined  to  the  five  or 
six  Western  States  where  the  large  packers 
had  their  business  concentrated  I 

In  looking  at  the  packing  industry  alone 
we  find,  of  course— Chicago  having  devel- 
oped it — that  Illinois  led  in  1900  in  volume 
of  product,  with  over  one-third  of  the  total. 
Kansas  and  Nebraska  were  second  and 
third,  on  account  of  the  large  houses  at 
Kansas  City,  Kansas,  and  South  Omaha, 
Nebraska,  each  with  almost  ten  per  cent,  of 
the  total.  But  what  other  state  do  you 
think  ranked  fourth  in  packing-house  prod- 
ucts ?  None  other  than  New  York,  and  In- 
diana was  fifth.  The  next  eight  named  in 
the  order  of  their  rank  as  packing  states 
were :  Missouri,  Massachusetts,  Iowa,  Penn- 
sylvania, Ohio,  California,  New  Jersey,  and 
Wisconsin.  Each  of  those  eight  produced 
in  1900  one  and  seven-tenths  to  five  and 
one-half  per  cent,  of  the  country's  total 
packing-industry  product. 

The  packing  industry  is  thus  widely  dis- 
156 


CAR  LINES  AND   THE   PEOPLE 

tributed  and  deeply  rooted  because  it  is  a 
supply-and-demand  business  that  can  be 
established  wherever  natural  supply  and 
demand  conditions  permit.  No  other  in- 
dustry of  comparable  importance  is  so  close 
to  the  people  in  all  aspects  or  so  closely 
knitted  into  the  fabric  of  national  prosper- 
ity. It  has  grown  as  the  nation  has  grown, 
and  has  contributed  its  share — I  might 
truthfully  say  more  than  its  proportionate 
share— to  general  and  individual  prosper- 
ity. In  the  fifty  years  from  1850  to  1900 
the  total  paid  for  the  raw  material  used  in 
the  industry,  the  product  of  American 
farms,  was  raised  from  nine  million,  four 
hundred  and  fifty-one  thousand  and  nine- 
ty-six dollars  to  six  hundred  and  eighty- 
three  million,  five  hundred  and  eighty-three 
thousand,  five  hundred  and  seventy-seven 
dollars — was  multiplied  by  seventy-five. 

The  period  of  most  rapid  development 
was  the  decade  from  1870  to  1880 ;  that  was 
due  to  the  development  of  the  refrigerator- 
157 


THE   PACKERS,   THE   PRIVATE 

car  for  shipping  fresh  beef,  development  of 
the  export  trade,  development  of  the  can- 
ning feature  of  the  business,  and  develop- 
ment of  by-product  utilization— one  hun- 
dred and  twenty  distinct  by-products  now 
being  made  by  the  packing-houses.  During 
the  next  decade,  1880  to  1890,  the  great 
Chicago  packing-houses  took  commanding 
position. 

The  stock-grower  or  cattleman  who 
makes  a  business  of  raising,  finishing,  and 
marketing  beef-cattle  does  not  need  to  be 
told  that  there  is  no  combine  of  packers  to 
depress  the  price  of  his  stock.  His  smaller 
neighbor,  who  raises  a  few  cattle  as  a  "side 
line"  in  connection  with  his  farming  oper- 
ations, and  who  does  not  closely  follow  mar- 
ket reports,  crop  reports,  and  who  does  not 
analyze  conditions  in  the  cattle  business, 
may  be  easily  led  into  error  along  with  the 
unanalytical  general  public. 

Go  where  you  will  throughout  the  cat- 
tle country — the  grazing  states  or  the  feed- 
158 


CAB  LINES  AND   THE   PEOPLE 

ing  states  where  range  cattle  are  "fin- 
ished" for  market — and  you  will  find  cattle- 
men among  the  prosperous  men  of  the 
community.  They  are  a  wide-awake,  ener- 
getic, progressive  class.  They  are  raising 
and  marketing  cattle,  not  for  fun  or  for 
their  health,  but  to  make  money. 

They  do  make  money— not  in  all  seasons 
of  each  year,  nor  every  year;  few  do  in 
any  business;  but  in  the  long  run  a  good 
proportion  of  them  have  prospered.  It  is 
obvious  that  any  combine  of  cattle-buyers 
that  would  put  down  prices  so  that  these 
men  could  not  make  money  would  ruin  the 
cattle  business,  cut  off  the  live-stock  supply 
upon  which  the  packing  industry  depends, 
and  thus  ruin  the  packing  business.  Do 
business  men  knowingly  commit  business 
suicide  ? 

The  packers  could  not  by  a  combination 

control  the  market  price  of  live  cattle.  The 

very  nature  and  character  of  the  business 

forbids  that.    They  would  not  do  it  if  they 

159 


THE   PACKERS,    THE  PRIVATE 

could.  That  would  be  business  suicide. 
The  packers  have  greatly  helped  to  develop 
the  cattle  business.  That  they  have  been 
moved  by  no  philanthropic  motive,  but  by 
cold  business  sense,  does  not  alter  the  fact. 
They  had  a  business  of  their  own,  they  saw 
opportunities,  wide  as  the  world,  for  devel- 
oping and  extending  that  business;  but  to 
utilize  those  opportunities  they  had  to  en- 
courage development  of  the  cattle  business. 
This  they  did,  not  merely  by  building  an  in- 
dustry that  furnished  an  every-day  market 
for  cattle,  but  they  did  it  by  personally  lend- 
ing their  aid  to  specific  developments  of  the 
stock-raising  business. 

The  most  casual  review  of  the  period 
prior  to  the  development  of  beef -refriger- 
ation and  beef-canning  shows  that  weak,  un- 
certain market  conditions  were  the  rule. 
The  entire  trade  was  on  a  hand-to-mouth 
basis.  The  cattle-raiser  had  no  stable  mar- 
ket, and  speculators  fleeced  him  at  every 
turn. 

160 


CAB  LINES  AND   THE  PEOPLE 

In  the  first  twenty  years  after  refriger- 
ating and  canning  were  commenced  by  the 
Chicago  packers,  the  population  of  the 
country  increased  fifty  per  cent. ;  the  num- 
ber of  cattle  shipped  and  marketed  by  the 
cattlemen  of  western  ranges  and  middle 
western  corn-farms  increased  500  per  cent. 
The  marketing  of  this  immense  production 
at  a  profit  was  made  possible  only  by  the 
packers '  energy,  the  utilization  of  by-prod- 
ucts, the  establishment  of  new  markets, 
and  by  pushing  the  business  to  the  utmost 
bounds  of  the  earth. 

There  is  no  attempt  to  deny  that  at  cer- 
tain tunes  the  prices  for  live  cattle  are  un- 
profitably  low — the  natural  result  of  a  tem- 
porary oversupply;  but  it  should  be  re- 
membered that  the  price  which  the  packer 
receives  for  his  beef  invariably  reflects 
this  depression  of  the  price  of  his  raw  ma- 
terial. He  has  no  control  over  the  one 
price  or  the  other;  both  are  governed  by 
supply  and  demand. 
11  161 


THE   PACKERS,   THE   PRIVATE 


CHAPTER  VIH 

PUBLIC  PREJUDICE   INEVITABLE 

THE    public    prejudice    against    the 
packer  is  more  than  popular— it  is 
almost  universal.    In  my  opinion, 
this  prejudice  is  inevitable,  and  will  always 
continue  without  regard  to  the  manner  in 
which  the  packing  business  is  conducted. 

This  is  because  the  packer  deals  in  a  food 
product  of  universal  and  extensive  use— a 
food  which  furnishes  the  basis  of  living  in- 
stead of  being  a  small  and  only  a  compara- 
tively incidental  part  thereof.  In  the  very 
nature  of  things  the  prices  of  meats  are 
bound  to  rise  rather  than  lower;  the  con- 
traction of  the  range,  as  I  have  already  ex- 
plained, is  sure  to  continue  and  also  sure  to 
increase  the  cost  of  producing  beef;  the 
price  of  corn-lands  is  steadily  and  inevi- 
162 


CAR  LINES  AND  THE  PEOPLE 

tably  rising,  and  this,  also,  means  the  in- 
creased cost  of  raising  and  feeding  meat 
animals  of  all  kinds. 

Of  course,  the  consumer  does  not  natu- 
rally take  all  this  into  consideration  when  he 
goes  into  the  retail  market  to  buy  his  meat; 
he  only  recalls  that  the  price  he  is  paying  is 
higher  than  he  used  to  pay,  and  so  he 
damns  the  packer  and  lets  it  go  at  that.  It 
is  a  perfectly  safe  thing  to  do. 

I  do  not  remember  a  time  when  the  retail 
prices  of  meats  were  satisfactory  to  the  con- 
sumer, and  I  do  not  believe  any  one  else 
does.  The  cost  always  seemed  too  great 
to  the  consumer— even  when  it  represented, 
as  it  sometimes  has— a  direct  loss  to  the 
packer. 

Again,  we  shall  miss  something  essential 
to  the  understanding  of  the  packers'  se- 
cure position  in  the  disregard  of  the  public 
if  we  fail  to  take  account  of  one  point  of 
human  nature:  the  fact  that  there  is,  in 
every  person  who  goes  to  market,  a  sense 
163 


THE   PACKERS,    THE   PRIVATE 

of  rebellion  against  the  fact  that  certain 
things  must  be  bought — and  bought  prac- 
tically every  day.  Compulsion  in  any- 
thing is  not  pleasant,  and  there  is  no  joy 
in  buying  something  that  has  to  be  bought 
to  prevent  the  pangs  of  hunger.  Conse- 
quently there  is,  universally,  a  feeling  of 
resentment  against  the  necessity  of  such  ex- 
penditures. 

Those  purchases  which  give  pleasure  are 
not  the  basic  necessities  of  life ;  they  are  the 
luxuries,  or  at  least  the  finer  comforts. 
And  it  is  human  nature  to  think  how  many 
of  these  coveted  things  could  be  bought 
with  the  money  which  must  be  paid  out  for 
meat  and  the  other  articles  of  food.  Thus 
the  daily  meat  bill  seems  to  stand  con- 
stantly between  the  consumer  and  some 
coveted  comfort,  some  article  of  beauty, 
some  greatly  desired  luxury  or  pleasure. 
And  because  it  does  so  stand — so  far  as  the 
feelings  of  the  purchaser  are  concerned— it 
provokes  an  unreasoning  resentment  of 
164 


CAR  LINES  AND  THE  PEOPLE 

which  the  packer  is  invariably  the  conven- 
ient target. 

All  of  this,  to  my  mind,  is  something 
inherent  in  the  situation  which  exists  in- 
dependent of  the  manner  in  which  the 
packers  conduct  their  business,  and  will  ex- 
ist without  regard  to  how  they  may  conduct 
it  in  the  future.  And  this  feeling  is  always 
there  to  be  appealed  to  by  the  agitator.  It 
makes  persons  of  the  fairest  intent  and  of 
the  best  training  and  environment  the 
ready  victims  of  violent  shocking  prej- 
udice against  the  packers. 

And  one  of  the  most  pitiable  features  of 
the  matter  is  that  the  individuals  who  thus 
yield  themselves  to  this  prejudice  are 
wholly  sincere.  Their  attitude  is  imper- 
sonal ;  they  have  no  personal  relations  with 
or  knowledge  of  any  of  the  packers;  they 
are  simply  made  receptive,  by  the  general 
trait  of  human  nature  of  which  I  have 
spoken,  to  the  falsehoods  and  misrepre- 
sentations put  out  by  the  yellow  magazines 
165 


THE   PACKERS,   THE  PRIVATE 

and  the  public  speakers  who  live  on  this 
kind  of  sensationalism. 

The  bitterness  and  the  venom  of  their 
feelings  against  the  packers  is  not  gener- 
ally realized.  One  way  in  which  it  is 
brought  directly  to  the  packer  is  by  means 
of  denunciatory  letters  from  persons  who 
are  strangers  to  the  packers  receiving  the 
epistles.  From  the  mass  of  these  I  select 
one  as  representative  of  the  extremes  to 
which  the  cunning  and  long-continued  cam- 
paign of  prejudice-building  against  the 
packers  will  move  a  man  from  whom  one 
might  naturally  expect  fairness  and  consid- 
eration. 

This  letter  is  from  a  minister  of  the  Gos- 
pel, the  pastor  of  the  First  Presbyterian 
Church  in  a  thriving  and  prosperous  city 
of  Michigan.  This  minister  of  the  Gospel 
is  wholly  a  stranger  to  me  and  I  do  not 
believe  that  we  have  ever  come  in  con- 
tact with  each  other,  no  matter  how  re- 
motely. There  is,  therefore,  no  personal 
166 


CAB  LINES  AND   THE  PEOPLE 

reason  for  his  rancor.    But  here  is  the  let- 
ter: 

"I  am  writing  to  inquire,  whether  it  pays, 
in  your  judgment,  to  come  into  the  pos- 
session of  millions  by  the  methods  of  the 
sneak  and  the  wrecker?  To  say  nothing  of 
the  faring  awaiting  such  a  robber  in  the 
world  to  come,  it  seems  to  me  the  contempt 
and  bitter  execrations  of  millions  of  one's 
fellow  men  can  scarcely  be  atoned  for  by  the 
possession  of  great  wealth. 

"When  Marshall  Field  died  the  other  day 
the  entire  country  mourned.  No  one  de- 
nied his  right  to  the  millions  he  had  amassed 
honorably.  But  were  you  to  pass  away  to- 
morrow, the  news  would  be  received  with 
general  satisfaction  from  one  end  of  the 
country  to  the  other.  No  business  besides 
your  own  would  suspend  operations  for  an 
hour.  It  should  be  a  bitter  thing  for  you 
to  realize  the  loathing  and  detestation  in 
which  you  are  held  in  every  place  where 
167 


THE   PACKERS,    THE  PRIVATE 

i 

your  unfair,  small-souled,  cruel  methods 
are  becoming  known. 

"It  is  the  hope  and  prayer  of  a  great 
many  that  the  courts  will  send  you  behind 
the  bars  for  some  of  the  crimes  with  which 
you  are  charged.  Degenerates  can  feel  the 
stigma  conferred  by  the  penitentiary  who 
are  insensible  to  the  blights  of  moral  con- 
demnation. But  consider  Depew,  Herrick, 
Odell,  Durham,  and  Cox,  who  are  now  suf- 
fering from  the  recoil  of  the  public  con- 
science. I  give  you  a  text— See  Matthew 
23:29-36." 

0 

Is  not  this  a  most  unnatural  letter  from 
a  minister  of  the  Christian  religion  to  write 
a  stranger?  Would  you  sit  down  and  put 
upon  paper  such  an  expression  of  hatred 
against  an  avowed  enemy?  I  think  not! 
A  man  to  do  this  without  any  personal  prov- 
ocation whatever  shows  that  his  mind  has 
heen  powerfully  wrought  upon — persist- 
ently and  systematically  warped  through 
168 


CAB  LINES  AND  THE  PEOPLE 

a  cunning  appeal  to  his  prejudice — and  this 
is  generally  cloaked  under  the  disguise  of 
an  appeal  to  conscience. 

I  assert  my  profound  belief  that  a  letter 
of  this  kind  from  such  a  source  would  be 
absolutely  an  impossibility  without  such  a 
campaign  of  persistent  misrepresentation 
and  organized  villification  as  that  to  which 
the  packers  have  for  years  been  subjected. 

Think  of  the  occupant  of  a  Christian  pul- 
pit, in  this  enlightened  day,  going  out  of 
his  way  to  write  a  stranger  a  letter  of  such 
studied  venom,  rankling  with  a  hatred  that 
would  have  done  justice  to  a  barbaric  High- 
land clansman,  in  the  old  days,  expressing 
his  contempt  of  a  feudal  enemy !  And  yet 
I  have  no  doubt  that,  personally,  this  Chris- 
tian pastor  is  a  kindly  man — perhaps  a 
very  gentle  and  amiable  one— who  really 
loves  justice  and  delights  in  doing  good. 

To  me  he  is  simply  an  example  of  the  ab- 
surd extremes  to  which  this  propaganda  of 
slander  against  the  packers  has  warped  the 
169 


THE   PACKERS,    THE   PRIVATE 

judgment  and  the  sentiment  of  thousands  of 
the  best  people  in  the  country. 

Because,  as  I  have  said,  a  compulsory  ex- 
penditure for  a  hard-and-fast  necessity  nat- 
urally creates  a  kind  of  latent  sentiment,  the 
slanders  of  certain  magazines  and  period- 
icals have  found  an  acceptance  otherwise 
impossible;  they  have  persisted  and  in- 
creased because  it  was  found  that  the  peo- 
ple read  these  charges  eagerly— and  that 
they  therefore  made  circulation. 

These  publications  have  shrewdly  and 
skillfully  cultivated  the  impression — so 
easy  to  cultivate,  for  the  reason  I  have  ex- 
plained— that  the  packers  are  the  natural 
and  inevitable  enemies  of  the  people,  prey- 
ing upon  them  as  the  wolf  preys  upon  the 
flock.  Only,  fully  to  delineate  the  charac- 
ter of  the  packer  as  it  is  depicted  by  the  sen- 
sational magazine,  the  wolf  should  be  a 
double-headed  monster  with  one  set  of  jaws 
busy  hamstringing  the  cattleman,  while  the 
170 


CAR  LINES  AND  THE   PEOPLE 

other  is  closed  upon  the  throat  of  the  con- 
sumer. 

Letters  of  the  kind  I  have  cited  are  the 
legitimate  fruit  of  such  a  sowing  as  the  sen- 
sational publications  have  indulged  in; 
that  actual  violence  does  not  follow  is  no 
fault  of  the  most  radical  of  these  publica- 
tions, who  are  not  looking  for  the  facts 
from  which  to  lead  their  readers  to  a  fair 
conclusion. 

Do  you  think  that  this  conclusion  is  not 
warranted  ?  Then  let  me  assure  you  that  I 
have  received,  through  the  United  States 
mails,  a  typewritten  letter  without  place  or 
date,  addressed  to  myself  and  reading  as 
follows : 

"We  have  been  reading  about  you  and 
your  kind  of  commercial  tyrants  in  Mc- 
Clure's.  We  would  think  that  you  tyrants 

and ought  to  get  tired  from  your 

continuous  gorging   upon   the  sweat   and 

blood  of  the  people  of  the  nation.     What 

171 


THE   PACKERS,   THE  PRIVATE 

are  you  and  aiming  at,  any- 
way? What  are  your  ultimate  objects? 
Have  you  not  got  enough  of  this  world's 
goods  already?  Are  you  pirates  seeking  to 
enslave  the  people?  Why  not  commence  to 
be  men  with  human  hearts  and  try  to  be 
fair  and  just? 

"We  feel  that  the  authorities  at  Wash- 
ington are  going  to  clip  your  cruel  claws 
very  shortly,  but  we  also  feel  that  personal 
punishment  and  a  little  terror  on  the  Rus- 
sian plan  will  in  a  large  measure  aid  in  ac- 
complishing effectively  the  work  in  hand. 

"We  have,  therefore,  organized  our- 
selves into  a  VIGILANCE  COMMITTEE 
for  the  PUBLIC  SAFETY,  and  propose  to 
Mse  dynamite  and  assassination  to  help 
suppressing  you  commercial  vultures  of  the 
nation. 

"We  propose  to  be  fair  and  just  in  our 

operations,  and  all  accused  tyrants  will  be 

justly  tried  before  our  tribunal,  and  if  found 

guilty  and  sentenced  to  death,  the   con- 

172 


CAB  LINES  AND  THE  PEOPLE 

demned  will  be  duly  notified  of  the  pen- 
alty they  are  to  pay,  and  which  punish- 
ment cannot  be  escaped;  if  not  to-day  then 
to-morrow.  This  is  the  plan  which  has 
been  so  successfully  in  operation  in  the  exe- 
cution of  the  Russian  political  tyrants  by 
the  Committee  of  Public  Safety  there. 

" We  beg  to  notify  you  that  you  have 
been  tried  by  our  tribunal,  and  your  death 
decreed.  PREPARE  FOR  THE  IN- 
EVITABLE! You  may  temporarily  avoid 
the  execution  of  this  sentence,  but  your 
time  will  shortly  come.  Our  officer  who  has 
been  appointed  to  execute  this  sentence  has 
already  been  appointed,  and  you  may  be 
assured  that  he  is  prepared  to  sacrifice  his 
life  in  such  a  worthy  cause.  The  game  is 
worth  it. 

"THE  VIGILANCE  COMMITTEE  FOB  THE 
PUBLIC  SAFETY." 

This  letter  indicates  upon  its  face  that  it 
has  been  brought  out  by  the  magazine  at- 
173 


THE   PACKERS,   THE   PRIVATE 

tacks  upon  the  packers.  It  speaks  for  itself 
in  that  particular.  The  only  comment  I 
care  to  offer  upon  it  is  that  it  is  the  natural 
and  legitimate  outcome  of  the  wanton  agi- 
tation to  which  the  packing  industry  and 
the  private-car-line  industry  have  been  sub- 
jected. 

Another  popular  method  of  inciting  prej- 
udice against  the  packers  is  to  represent 
them  as  throttling  the  railroads  of  the 
country  and  forcing  unfairly  low  freight 
rates  on  dressed  meats  and  packing-house 
products.  Some  railroad  officials  have  en- 
couraged this  misrepresentation.  At  ban- 
quets and  elsewhere  they  have  tossed  off 
jauntily-worded  expressions  of  rate-making 
that  sound  well  in  the  ears  of  the  inexpert 
and  strengthen  the  belief  that '  *  the  packers 
make  their  own  rates. " 

Mr.  A.  B.  Stickney,  president  of  the  Chi- 
cago Great  Western  Railway,  has  fre- 
quently indulged  in  word-pictures  of  the 
poor  trembling  railroads  in  the  clutches  of 
174 


CAB  LINES  AND  THE  PEOPLE 

the  voracious  packers.  One  of  his  most 
often-quoted  statements  runs  as  follows : 

"In  fixing  the  rate  on  dressed  meat  we" 
(the  railroads  I  presume)  "don't  have  veiy 
much  to  say.  The  packer  generally  makes 
the  rate.  He  comes  to  you  and  always 
makes  you  feel  that  he  is  your  friend.  Then 
he  asks  how  much  you  charge  for  a  certain 
shipment  of  dressed  meats.  The  published 
tariff  may  be  twenty-three  cents  a  hundred, 
but  he  will  not  pay  that.  You  say  to  him : 
'I'll  carry  your  meat  for  eighteen  cents.' 
He  says:  'Oh,  no,  you  won't;  I  won't  pay 
that ! '  Then  you  say :  *  Well,  what  will  you 
pay  for  it  ? '  He  then  replies : '  I  can  get  it 
hauled  for  sixteen  cents.'  So  you  haul  it 
for  sixteen  cents. ' ' 

That  sounds  convincing;  to  the  average 
reader  or  listener  it  appears  to  be  a  freshly 
written,  undried  page  out  of  the  every-day 
experience  of  a  railroad  manager,  and 
sounds  as  if  it  might  be  a  verbatim  re- 
port of  what  took  place  only  the  day  be- 
175 


THE   PACKERS,    THE   PRIVATE 

fore  in  Mr.  Stickney's  office.  Now,  what 
are  the  facts? 

The  rate  on  dressed  meats  from  Missouri 
River  points— Kansas  City,  Omaha,  St. 
Joseph,  and  Sioux  City — to  Chicago  is 
twenty  cents  a  hundred,  and  eighteen  and  a 
half  cents  on  through  business.  That  was 
the  rate  when  Mr.  Stickney  made  the  state- 
ment quoted  above.  It  had  been  the  rate 
for  more  than  three  years.  It  will  continue 
to  be  the  rate  for  more  than  three  years 
longer. 

That  rate  was  fixed  by  a  formal  legal  con- 
tract between  Mr.  Stickney's  road,  the  Chi- 
cago Great  Western,  and  the  Missouri 
River  packers — a  contract  executed  in  the 
summer  of  1902  and  made  'binding  for  seven 
years.  And  Mr.  Stickney  was  so  well 
pleased  ivith  that  contract  that  he  made  exe- 
cution of  it  the  occasion  of  a  circular  letter 
to  the  Great  Western  stockholders,  in  which 
he  explained  (and  almost  boasted  of)  what 
a  good  bargain  the  railroad  had  driven 
176 


CAB  LINES  AND  THE  PEOPLE 

with  the  packers— a  bargain  that  meant  an 
advance  of  fifteen  per  cent,  over  rates  pre- 
viously prevailing,  and  that  meant  a  fifty 
per  cent,  increase  in  the  railroad 's  net  earn- 
ings. 

Mr.  Stickney  also  made  it  appear  in  his 
circular  that  the  new  rate  was  as  high  a 
rate,  the  Great  Western  believed,  as  could 
be  justly  exacted  from  the  packers  in  view 
of  the  small  margin  of  profit  in  the  packers ' 
business.  But  let  Mr.  Stickney  speak  for 
himself  on  rates.  Here  are  extracts  from 
that  " private  and  confidential"  circular 
which,  as  I  have  said,  Mr.  Stickney  sent  to 
Great  Western  stockholders  under  date  of 
August  4, 1902,  the  italics  being  mine : 

"It  gives  the  management  pleasure  to  be 
able  to  announce  that  the  company  has  exe- 
cuted identical  contracts  with  each  of  the 
packing  companies  doing  business  at  Kan- 
sas City,  St.  Joseph,  Omaha,  and  Sioux  City, 
by  which  the  packers  agree  to  route  over  the 
Chicago  Great  Western  lines  at  least  a  cer- 
12  177 


THE   PACKERS,    THE   PRIVATE 

tain  percentage  of  the  entire  output  of  their 
plants,  at  definite  rates,  for  the  term  of 
seven  years.  The  rates  are  a  substantial 
advance  over  the  rates  which  have  hereto- 
fore prevailed. 

"The  aggregate  revenue  which  these 
contracts  secure  to  the  Chicago  Great  West- 
ern Railway  on  the  present  volume  of  busi- 
ness is  estimated  to  be  fourteen  million  dol- 
lars, and  if  the  business  increases  as  rap- 
idly in  the  next  seven  years  as  in  the  past, 
approximately  twenty  million  dollars. 

"These  contracts  cannot  be  understood 
without  a  knowledge  of  the  magnitude  of 
the  packing  industry.  The  published  re- 
port of  Swift  &  Co.  gives  the  amount  of  its 
sales  last  year  at  the  enormous  sum  of  two 
hundred  and  twenty  million  dollars.  Pre- 
sumably its  chief  competitor,  Armour  & 
Co.,  did  substantially  as  much,  and  it  is 
probably  safe  to  estimate  that  the  aggre- 
gate sales  of  the  other  packers  amount  to 
enough  to  make  the  grand  total  fully  seven 
178 


CAB  LINES  AND  THE  PEOPLE 

hundred  million  dollars.  More  than  half 
of  the  aggregate  business  is  the  output  of 
the  plants  at  the  Missouri  River  cities  men- 
tioned, and  is  effected  by  the  con- 
tracts. 

'  *  The  narrowness  of  the  margin  of  profits 
is  even  more  surprising  than  the  magnitude 
of  the  transactions.  The  report  of  Swift 
&  Co.  (the  only  report  available)  gives  the 
information  that  on  sales  during  last  year, 
practically  in  a  retail  way,  aggregating 
over  two  hundred  and  twenty  million  dol- 
lars of  perishable  commodities  requiring 
the  greatest  care  to  guard  against  serious 
loss,  the  entire  profits  were  only  about 
three  million  dollars,  or  less  than  one  and 
one-half  per  cent. 

"With  such  a  narrow  margin  of  profit  it 
is  easy  to  see  that  freight  rates  are  an  im- 
portant factor  in  the  packing-house  busi- 
ness. It  is  estimated  that  the  annual  freight 
bills  amount  to  three  times  the  annual  prof- 
its. Hence,  any  increase  in  the  rates  which 
179 


THE   PACKERS,   THE   PRIVATE 

have  been  established  for  years,  to  which 
the  whole  business  has  been  adjusted,  is  a 
serious  matter. 

"And  the  packers  being  willing  to  agree 
to  a  permanent,  substantial  advance  of 
more  than  fifteen  per  cent.,  the  manage- 
ment felt  that  its  duty  to  the  stockholders 
demanded  that  it  should  accept  the  oppor- 
tunity to  secure,  for  a  term  of  years,  this 
substantial  advance  in  rates.  Accordingly 
it  has  entered  into  identical  and  lawful  con- 
tracts with  each  and  every  packer  doing 
business  at  Kansas  City,  St.  Joseph,  Omaha, 
and  Sioux  City. 

"In  consideration  of  this  contract  on  the 
part  of  the  railroad,  the  packers  agree  to 
ship  over  the  Chicago  Great  Western  lines 
in  each  and  every  month  during  the  full 
term  of  seven  years  at  least  a  certain  per- 
centage of  the  entire  output  of  their  respec- 
tive packing-houses,  and  of  all  such  pack- 
ing-houses as  they,  their  successors  and  as- 
signs, may  hereafter  own  or  control,  and  to 
180 


CAR  LINES  AND   THE  PEOPLE 

pay  therefor  the  full  published  tariff 
rates,  regardless  of  any  lower  rates  which 
may  be  offered  by  other  railway  com- 
panies. 

"These  contracts,  unlike  the  'maximum 
rate  contracts, '  are  legal,  and  therefore  en- 
forceable in  the  courts. 

"There  is  no  way  by  which  the  other 
lines  can  reduce  the  rate  or  quantity. 

"It  is  certainly  satisfactory  to  know  that 
so  large  a  volume  of  gross  revenue,  ap- 
proximately one  million  dollars  per  annum, 
is  already  secured  by  contract  for  the 
Omaha  and  Sioux  City  lines,  now  under  con- 
struction, as  soon  as  they  are  completed." 

It  is  instructive  to  notice  the  difference 
between  Mr.  Stickney  talking  to  the  general 
public  about  freight  rates  and  President 
Stickney  telling  his  stockholders  in  a  con- 
fidential circular  what  a  good  bargain  he 
has  made  with  the  packers.  I  have  only  to 
add  that  loose-tongued  talk  and  undigested 
generalizing  by  men  supposed  to  speak  au- 
181 


thoritatively  has  had  much  to  do  with 
prejudicing  the  public  mind  against  the 
packers. 

One  of  the  most  flagrant  of  all  the  many 
misrepresentations  which  have  recently  ap- 
peared in  certain  magazines  is  this  state- 
ment :  "Beef  is  hung  up  in  the  refrigerator- 
cars.  There  is  a  space  beneath  on  the 
floor  of  the  car.  It  has  been  charged  that 
this  space  is  sometimes  full  of  dressed  poul- 
try, eggs,  and  so  on.  Poultry  and  eggs 
take  a  high  freight  rate;  but,  thus  packed, 
Armour  gets  them  carried  for  nothing.  .  .  . 
How  much  of  such  business  goes  on  no  one 
knows,  but  it  has  been  shown  to  exist  in 


numerous  cases." 


Nothing  could  be  falser  than  this  state- 
ment. It  is  untrue  in  every  respect  and 
particular.  The  older  men  in  the  employ 
of  Armour  &  Co.  are  witnesses  to  the  fact 
that  my  father's  instructions  were  most 
strict  on  this  point ;  that  he  guarded  against 
anything  of  the  sort  by  pointing  out  both 
182 


CAR  LINES  AND   THE   PEOPLE 

the  dishonesty  and  the  foolishness  of  any 
practice  of  that  nature. 

The  same  precautions  against  the  pos- 
sibility of  that  sort  of  thing  on  the  part  of 
an  over-zealous  employee  have  been  taken 
by  myself.  There  is  not  a  man  in  the  ship- 
ping department  of  Armour  &  Co.  who 
does  not  thoroughly  understand  that  an  at- 
tempt at  such  a  practice  would  bring  him 
instant  dismissal. 

Any  person  believing  that  such  a  thing 
would  be  done  by  any  packer  can  quickly 
rid  his  mind  of  such  a  notion  by  going  to 
the  freight  department  of  any  railroad 
handling  packing-house  business.  The 
roads '  inspectors  are  not  only  on  the  plat- 
forms from  which  the  cars  are  loaded,  but 
they  have  access  to  the  books  of  account  and 
to  the  very  invoices  from  which  the  collec- 
tions are  made  from  the  persons  or  houses 
to  whom  the  cars  are  shipped. 

The  statement  is  not  only  utterly  false, 
but  it  is  absurd,  and  any  freight  man  who 
183 


THE   PACKERS,   THE   PRIVATE 

knows  the  actual  processes  of  shipping  from 
a  packing-house  will  say  so.  They  know 
that  a  thing  of  this  kind  could  not  be  done 
without  detection,  and  that  an  attempt  to 
do  it  would  be  silly  and  suicidal. 


184 


CAR  LINES  AND  THE   PEOPLE 


CHAPTER  IX 

ANOTHER  CONTRIBUTION  TO  PROGRESS 

WHENEVER  the  people  of  this  coun- 
try— or  any  of  them — come  to  cast 
up  their  score  with  the  packers, 
there  are  some  things  which  cannot  in  jus- 
tice be  overlooked,  although  they  are  so 
commonplace  as  to  be  accepted  as  a  mere 
matter  of  course. 

The  packers'  contribution  to  economic 
progress  in  the  way  of  by-product  utiliza- 
tion has  been  enormous.  It  is  impossible 
to  realize  the  extent  to  which  this  touches 
almost  every  physical  element  in  our  every- 
day life — from  making  worn-out  and  bar- 
ren lands  yield  bounteous  crops  to  supply- 
ing the  buttons  on  our  coats.  If  all  these 
by-products  were  suddenly  stricken  from 
commerce  the  void  would  astound  the 
185 


THE   PACKERS,   THE   PRIVATE 

world,  and  the  result  would  be  everywhere 
considered  a  dire  public  calamity. 

"WASTE  NOT"  is  the  packer's  creed,  and 
his  scientific  faithfulness  to  it — inspired  by 
self-interest — is  actually  one  of  the  most 
fruitful  sources  of  economic  advantage  to 
the  people  of  the  civilized  world  thus  far 
brought  about  by  the  aid  of  the  laboratory 
of  the  scientist. 

Let  us  see  just  how  much  this  by-product 
utilization  means  to  the  grower  and  the 
consumer  of  food-animals  as  well  as  the 
people  in  general. 

In  the  old  times  packing  was  done  in  the 
winter.  The  first  change  in  method  was 
the  use  of  ice  and  the  commencement  of 
summer  packing.  This  started  in  hog- 
packing,  but  with  the  introduction  of  the 
refrigerator-car  beef  was  killed  largely  in 
the  summer.  About  this  time  some  of  the 
packers  adopted  the  method  of  packing  and 
shipping  meats  in  tin  cans.  The  refriger- 
ator-car permitted  beef  to  be  killed  near 
186 


where  it  was  grown,  as  it  was  cheaper  to 
pay  freight  on  five  hundred  and  fifty 
pounds  of  carcass  beef  than  on  one  thou- 
sand pounds  of  live  animal. 

Immediately  following  this  the  railroads 
endeavored  to  advance  the  freight  on 
dressed  beef  so  that  they  could  still  con- 
tinue to  ship  the  animals  alive  on  the  hoof, 
as  they  were  afraid  that  their  tonnage 
would  be  materially  reduced.  It  was  soon 
demonstrated  that  under  the  new  system 
their  beef  tonnage  was  greater  and  their 
old  live-animal  tonnage  smaller,  and  though 
the  dressed-beef  rates  east  were  much 
greater  per  pound  than  for  live  animals, 
yet  the  freight  on  five  hundred  and  fifty 
pounds  of  dressed  beef  is  less  than  on  one 
thousand  pounds  of  live  animal. 

The  four  hundred  and  fifty  pounds  of 
non-edible  material  was  largely  thrown 
away,  although  the  hide  and  tallow  were 
utilized.  Later,  some  of  the  waste  prod- 
uct was  used  in  the  manufacture  of  glue. 
187 


THE   PACKERS,   THE   PRIVATE 

Nitrogen  being  the  chief  element  in  plant 
food,  and  this  being  abundant  in  the  great 
mass  of  refuse  matter  originally  thrown 
away  as  hopeless  waste  from  all  the  pack- 
er's processes,  a  most  important  economic 
advance  was  made  in  the  step  which  turned 
this  large  volume  of  scrappage  into  fertil- 
izer. 

It  is  good  sense  and  for  the  best  interest 
of  the  world  that  all  material  not  needed  to 
feed,  clothe,  and  heal  the  world  should  be 
returned  to  the  ground  as  food  for  plants, 
to  grow  more  grain,  to  feed  more  cattle, 
and  to  feed  more  people.  Thus  is  the  cir- 
cle completed  by  the  packer. 

All  the  cunning  of  the  chemist  has  been 
called  into  service  to  save,  to  make  the  most 
of  every  scrap  of  material  in  hand,  and  to 
discover  new  ways  in  which  some  element 
of  waste  may  be  diverted  from  uselessness 
to  use. 

Hundreds  of  valuable  products  are  now 
made  and  shipped  all  over  the  world  from 
188 


CAB  LINES  AND  THE  PEOPLE 

materials  which,  under  the  old  methods,  had 
little  or  no  value.  Thousands  of  people 
are  employed  in  manufacturing  these 
products.  The  technical  schools  are  con- 
stantly being  called  upon  for  young  men  to 
aid  in  solving  new  problems  in  by-product 
utilization.  New  plants  are  being  built  re- 
quiring material,  machinery,  and  labor  in 
their  construction.  Success  in  by-product 
utilization  in  the  packing  industry  has  di- 
rected the  attention  of  other  industries  to 
this  important  element  in  industrial  admin- 
istration. 

All  this  directly  affects  the  people  and 
has  been  of  great  benefit  to  them.  The  in- 
vestigator in  medicinal  and  other  lines  is 
constantly  calling  on  the  packer  for  mate- 
rial to  aid  him  in  his  work.  In  the  pharma- 
ceutical line  much  has  been  done  of  benefit, 
and  many  ills  are  helped  by  pharmaceuti- 
cal preparations  of  animal  origin. 

In  the  fertilizer  line  many  sections  are 
given    over    to    growing    products    which 
189 


THE   PACKERS,   THE   PRIVATE 

could  not  be  profitably  grown  without  the 
use  of  fertilizers.  The  upland  cotton  sec- 
tion of  the  South  has  been  made  by  the  use 
of  fertilizer  in  the  growing  of  cotton. 

Sandy  soils  in  sections  climatically  favor- 
able have  been  developed  into  large  truck- 
farming  districts  through  the  use  of  fertil- 
izers, as  the  soil,  without  fertilizer,  is  prac- 
tically sterile.  In  the  manufacture  of  fer- 
tilizer the  packer  has  done  his  share  in  sav- 
ing material  formerly  permitted  to  go  to 
waste. 

The  importance  of  fertilizer  to  the  agri- 
cultural and  fruit-growing  interests  of  the 
country  calls  for  a  word  of  detailed  expla- 
nation regarding  this  interesting  and  val- 
uable by-product.  Fertilizer  is  food  for 
plants  the  same  as  corn  for  cattle  and  meat 
for  men.  In  the  early  '80s,  Peruvian 
guano  being  very  high  and  a  demand  hav- 
ing arisen  for  commercial  fertilizers,  it  was 
suggested  to  the  Chicago  slaughterers  that 
the  meaty  and  bony  materials  deposited  in 
190 


CAE  LINES  AND   THE  PEOPLE 

the  bottom  of  the  large  tanks  used  in  ren- 
dering lard  and  tallow  be  dried  and  used  as 
a  source  of  nitrogen  and  phosphorus  in 
compounding  fertilizers,  mixing  with  them 
acid  phosphate  made  by  dissolving  rock 
phosphate  with  acid.  This  demand  came 
first  from  the  East,  and  was  the  beginning 
of  the  fertilizer  industry  in  Chicago. 

A  hot  air  dryer  was  designed  for  this 
work.  This  led  on  to  utilization  of  still 
other  materials  that  formerly  were  largely 
wasted.  The  blood  accumulating  in  the 
killing  of  cattle  was  boiled  to  coagulate  the 
albumen,  and  was  dried  and  also  used  as 
fertilizer.  The  water  in  the  rendering 
tanks  also  is  evaporated  and  the  solid  por- 
tions dried  and  made  into  concentrated 
tankage. 

These  materials,  tankage  and  blood,  and 
ground  waste  hoof  and  horn  scraps,  are 
valuable  chiefly  for  their  nitrogenous  con- 
tents. Blood  and  hoof  meal,  containing  al- 
most as  much  nitrogen  as  nitrate  of  soda  or 
191 


THE    PACKERS,    THE   PRIVATE 

sulphate  of  ammonia  and  being  very  avail- 
able although  not  soluble  in  water,  possessed 
certain  chemical  advantages  over  nitrate  of 
soda  and  sulphate  of  ammonia  when  com- 
pounded with  other  fertilizer  ingredients. 
These  materials  were  for  a  number  of  years 
sold  to  the  manufacturers  of  complete  fer- 
tilizers, but  in  the  early  '90s  my  father 
began  the  manufacture  of  complete  fer- 
tilizers himself,  combining  with  his  mate- 
rial potash  from  Germany  and  phosphates 
from  Tennessee,  Florida,  and  South  Caro- 
lina. 

This  end  of  the  packing  business  has 
grown  very  rapidly,  and  Armour  &  Com- 
pany now  have  plants  at  many  points  in  the 
United  States  for  the  manufacture  of  fer- 
tilizers, shipping  their  blood,  bone,  and 
tankage  to  those  manufacturing  points, 
making  their  sulphuric  acid  and  acid  phos- 
phate at  these  various  plants,  and  supply- 
ing the  trade  of  the  immediate  section.  Fer- 
tilizers are  made  of  different  analyses  for 
192 


CAR  LINES  AND  THE  PEOPLE 

different  soils,  climates  and  crops — a  quick 
acting  fertilizer  being  prepared  for  truck- 
ers who  must  get  their  product  into  the 
very  early  markets  and  a  slower  acting  fer- 
tilizer for  winter  wheat.  Practically  all  of 
the  cotton  in  the  United  States,  with  the  ex- 
ception of  a  part  of  that  grown  in  Texas, 
is  grown  with  fertilizers,  and  nearly  all  of 
the  winter  wheat  producing  states  are  now 
largely  using  fertilizers. 

In  connection  with  the  fertilizer  works 
is  prepared  blood  albumen  which,  up  to  six 
years  ago,  had  been  imported  entirely  from 
Europe.  It  was  claimed  it  could  not  be 
made  in  this  country;  the  climate  would  not 
permit,  etc.  This  product  is  used  by  the 
calico  printers  in  fixing  certain  pigment 
colors,  such  as  ultramarine,  to  the  cloth  on 
which  they  are  printed.  Blood  albumen  is 
similar  to  that  in  the  white  of  an  egg,  and 
when  the  temperature  is  raised  to  a  certain 
point  it  coagulates.  A  paste  ink  is  made  by 
mixing  liquid  albumen  with  the  pigment, 
13  193 


THE   PACKERS,   THE   PRIVATE 

and  this  ink  is  used  in  printing  the  cloths. 
After  these  are  printed,  they  are  run  into 
a  room  and  steamed  at  a  temperature 
approximating  two  hundred  degrees.  This 
action  coagulates  the  albumen  in  the  ink, 
rendering  it  insoluble  in  water,  and  mechan- 
ically fixes  the  color  in  the  cloth. 

In  addition  to  this,  albumen  is  used  by 
the  tanner  in  finishing  leathers;  by  the 
makers  of  certain  extracts,  and  by  sugar 
manufacturers  for  the  clarifying  of  liquors. 

Dried  blood  is  used  as  a  fertilizer,  and  is 
also  beginning  to  be  used  quite  largely 
as  a  stock  food.  It  is  the  most  con- 
centrated food  we  have,  containing  some- 
thing like  eighty-seven  per  cent,  of  pro- 
tein, and  gives  exceptionally  good  results 
when  fed  to  horses  and  other  live  stock  in 
connection  with  their  regular  feed.  The 
Kansas  City  experiment  station  has  dis- 
covered that  a  disease  known  as  " scours," 
which  greatly  troubles  young  calves,  can  be 
cured  by  the  addition  of  a  little  of  this  dried 
194 


CAK  LINES   AND   THE  PEOPLE 

blood  in  the  skim  milk  on  which  they  are 
fed.  This  discovery  is  saving  thousands  of 
calves  every  year.  Certain  portions  of 
tankage  are  ground  up  into  meat  meal  and 
largely  sold  for  the  growing  of  poultry  and 
for  the  fattening  of  hogs  and  live  stock. 
Bone  is  coarsely  granulated  and  also  used 
for  the  same  purpose. 

The  furniture  of  the  country  is  glued 
with  the  packers '  glue.  A  great  deal  of  the 
wool  used  in  clothing  is  made  from  sheep 
slaughtered  by  the  packers.  One  of  the 
largest  sources  of  curled  hair  is  the  switch 
from  the  tails  of  cattle.  Bristles  are  cured 
for  the  brushmaker.  A  large  portion  of 
the  soap  manufactured  comes  from  the  tal- 
lows and  greases  prepared  by  the  packers. 

The  first  steps  in  by-product  utilization 
cannot  fail  to  interest  those  who  like  to 
trace  the  lines  of  economic  progress. 

In  the  early  days  of  the  packing  industry, 
as  I  have  already  remarked,  very  little  use 
was  made  of  the  offal  and  refuse  other  than 
195 


THE   PACKERS,   THE   PRIVATE 

the  hide,  tallow  and  grease.  The  blood, 
cattle  feet,  the  head  and  other  refuse  was 
buried  or  hauled  out  on  the  prairies  and 
buried.  The  horns  finally  became  of  some 
value,  and  after  the  horn  pith  was  removed 
they  were  shipped  to  Europe,  and  there 
manufactured  into  horn  buttons,  combs  and 
various  ornaments;  but  no  manufacturing 
of  this  sort  was  attempted  in  the  United 
States  until  within  recent  years. 

About  the  first  use  made  of  the  offal  at 
Chicago  was  in  the  latter  part  of  the  '70s, 
when  a  small  glue  manufacturing  plant  was 
established.  There  was  no  attempt  to  buy 
material  from  the  packers,  but,  as  the  story 
goes,  the  cattle  heads  and  feet  buried  by  the 
packers  during  the  day  were  dug  up  at 
night,  hauled  to  the  glue  factory  and  con- 
verted into  glue  and  bone  fertilizer.  Soon 
after  this  the  packers  realized  that  the  ma- 
terial had  some  value,  and  began  to  charge 
for  it.  In  the  meantime,  quite  an  industry 
had  been  built  up  in  the  manufacture 
196 


CAR  LINES  AND  THE  PEOPLE 

of  glue,  and  in  the  year  1885  Armour  & 
Company  purchased  the  Wahl  Brothers' 
glue  factory.  This  was  the  first  entrance 
of  the  packers  into  the  manufacture  of 
glues. 

The  industry  has  grown  rapidly,  Armour 
&  Company  having  the  largest  glue  plant 
in  the  world,  which  not  only  uses  the  raw 
material  furnished  by  its  own  packing 
houses,  but  also  buys  largely  from  other 
packers.  They  manufacture  all  grades  of 
glue — bone  glues,  hide  glues,  etc. 

The  phosphate  of  lime  in  bone  is  held  to- 
gether by  nitrogenous  binding  material 
from  which  bone  glue  is  made,  and  which 
can  be  taken  out  of  bone  by  cooking  at  a 
low  temperature,  or  the  lime  can  be  leached 
out  of  the  bone  stock  by  acids.  After  the 
glue  is  extracted,  the  liquor  is  concentrated 
in  vacuum,  chilled  by  refrigeration,  cut  up 
into  thin  layers  and  dried  on  wire  screening 
in  large  hot  air  dryers.  Then  it  is  sold  as 
sheet  glue,  broken  glue  or  ground  glue,  as 
197 


THE   PACKEES,    THE   PRIVATE 

the  trade  may  demand.  During  the  process 
of  glue  boiling,  the  tallow  and  grease  is  ex- 
tracted and  skimmed  off  and  the  bone  and 
meaty  matter  deposited  is  dried,  ground  up 
and  sold  as  fertilizer. 

Gelatin  is  also  made  at  the  glue  works 
from  selected  "calves'  stock."  The  process 
is  one  requiring  great  care  and  skill. 

Brewers'  isinglass  is  made  from  animal 
tissues  and  is  used  by  the  brewers  in  the 
clarifying  of  their  liquors.  This  product 
is  a  transparent  white  article  sold  in  sheets 
and  resembles  the  finest  grades  of  gelatin 
in  appearance. 

In  the  bone-cutting  department,  a  branch 
of  the  fertilizer  works,  are  made  white 
knife  handles  and  handles  for  knives, 
razors,  etc.,  shaped,  carved  and  dyed  to  re- 
semble stag  horn.  Here  are  also  made  col- 
lar buttons,  pipe  mouth-pieces,  bone  screws 
used  to  connect  the  pipe  mouth-pieces  and 
the  bowl  of  the  pipe,  dice,  little  square 
blocks  or  "dummy  teeth"  used  by  dental 
198 


CAR  LINES  AND  THE  PEOPLE 

students  in  practice  work;  nursing-bottle 
rings  and  shields,  and  bone  buttons  of  all 
kinds. 

In  the  manufacture  of  fine  steel  parts 
of  guns,  bicycles,  automobiles,  and  other 
pieces  of  fine  mechanism,  it  is  necessary  to 
case-harden  the  surface  of  certain  working 
parts;  that  is,  steel  is  fashioned  into  its 
final  shape  when  soft  and  these  parts  are 
then  put  in  a  large  iron  box  and  surrounded 
by  hard  granulated  bone.  This  box  is  then 
fastened  together,  luted  and  put  in  a  fur- 
nace. There  it  is  heated  to  a  certain  color 
and  the  contents  dumped  into  water.  The 
result  is  that  the  steel  has  been  case-hard- 
ened. In  other  words,  a  very  high  carbon 
steel  has  been  formed  on  the  outside  of  the 
parts  thus  treated,  making  them  extremely 
hard.  Bone  is  also  used  to  make  the  blue 
color  on  rifle  barrels,  etc. 

A  word  regarding  the  utilization  of 
hoofs:  These  are  assorted  into  three 
grades;  the  white  hoofs  being  used  in  the 
199 


THE   PACKERS,   THE   PRIVATE 

manufacture  of  a  certain  grade  of  buttons 
which  closely  resemble  the  better  quality 
of  pearl  buttons.  The  striped  hoofs  are  flat- 
tened into  plates  by  pressure  under  heat, 
and  are  used  in  the  manufacture  of  hair- 
pins; they  are  also  used  in  the  manufac- 
ture of  buttons.  The  black  hoofs  and  hoof 
scraps  are  used  in  the  manufacture  of  cya- 
nide and  chrome.  They  are  also  ground  up 
into  a  fine  powder  and  used  as  a  nitrog- 
enous fertilizer  for  the  growing  of  grapes 
and  other  special  crops. 

Glycerin  is  another  important  by-prod- 
uct. At  a  certain  time  in  the  boiling  of 
soap  salt  is  introduced  into  the  kettles, 
which  carries  to  the  bottom  the  glycerin  of 
the  fat  together  with  the  lye  that  has  not 
been  used  in  the  saponifying  of  the  soap. 
This  spent  lye  is  drawn  off  and  from  it  is 
manufactured  glycerin.  In  the  manufac- 
ture of  soaps  all  grades  are  made,  from  the 
very  finest  toilet  and  shaving  soaps  to  the 
200 


CAR  LINES  AND  THE  PEOPLE 

mottled  German  scrubbing  soaps.   Washing 
powders  are  also  prepared  from  soap  stock. 

Packing-house  laboratory  products,  the 
results  of  original  research  by  scientists  of 
the  first  class,  are  employed  every  day  by 
physicians,  surgeons,  dentists,  and  chem- 
ists throughout  the  world.  More  than 
thirty  recognized  therapeutic  agents  of 
animal  origin  are  produced  in  Armour  & 
Co.'s  laboratory.  Among  them  are  the 
pepsin  and  pancreatin  which  physicians 
use  in  treating  digestive  disorders. 

There  is  a  product  of  thyroid  glands  that 
is  employed  in  treating  cretinism  or  idiocy. 
Another  is  suprarenalin,  used  in  the  most 
delicate  surgical  operations  to  stop  the  flow 
of  blood.  To  illustrate  how  closely  the  by- 
product feature  of  the  business  is  gleaned, 
the  suprarenal  glands  of  more  than  one 
hundred  thousand  sheep  are  required  to 
produce  one  pound  of  suprarenalin,  and 
when  produced  this  suprarenalin  is  worth 
more  than  five  thousand  dollars  a  pound. 
201 


THE   PACKERS,   THE   PRIVATE 

The  oil  extracted  from  the  wool  of 
slaughtered  sheep  is  used  in  various  emul- 
sions and  toilet  preparations,  being  pecu- 
liarly soft  and  soothing  to  the  skin.  An- 
hydrous ammonia  is  another  by-product 
of  the  packing-house  laboratory  and  a  very 
extensive  business  is  done  in  this  article. 

Extract  of  beef  is  a  product  which  serves 
to  illustrate  the  progress  of  the  pack- 
ing industry  during  comparatively  recent 
years,  and  the  rapid  evolution  from  the 
slaughter-house  to  the  wonderful  packing 
plants  of  to-day,  where  every  department 
is  conducted  under  the  most  advanced  scien- 
tific methods. 

The  process  of  making  beef  extract  is 
simple.  Realizing  that  South  American 
and  Australian  beef  extracts,  which  are 
made  from  wild  cattle  usually  killed  for 
their  hides  and  bones,  could  not  possibly 
possess  the  delicious  flavor  of  beef  extract 
made  from  the  carefully  fattened  domestic 
cattle  of  the  United  States,  the  American 
202 


CAR  LINES  AND   THE  PEOPLE 

methods  have  been  directed  towards  the 
preservation  of  the  true  beef  flavor  in  a  con- 
centrated form.  Tons  of  fresh  meats  are 
used  daily  for  making  beef  extract.  After 
the  extract  has  been  taken  from  the  meat, 
the  remaining  fibre  is  dried,  ground  or  pow- 
dered and  sold  largely  in  foreign  markets, 
where  it  is  used  in  various  forms  of  animal 
food. 

The  liquors  cooked  from  the  meat  are 
concentrated  in  vacuum  pans  to  either  solid 
or  fluid  consistency,  as  may  be  desired.  It 
is  then  a  pure,  concentrated  extract  of  beef. 
Gouffe  says  that  beef  broth  is  the  soul  of 
domestic  cookery,  but  how  to  get  that 
"soul"  from  the  old-time  recipe,  "Take  a 
shin  of  beef,"  has  proved  a  difficult  prob- 
lem to  many  housekeepers.  Now,  with  a 
jar  of  American  beef  extract  at  hand,  the 
cook  has,  without  time  or  trouble,  the  best 
beef  broth  for  making  soups,  sauces,  beef 
teas,  etc. 

As  the  consumption  of  beef  extract  has 
203 


THE   PACKERS,   THE   PRIVATE 

grown,  so,  too,  have  its  forms  of  prepara- 
tion. To-day  one  may  obtain  it  in  the  solid 
or  fluid  form,  or  in  combination  with  aspar- 
agus, tomatoes  and  other  delicious  vegeta- 
bles. 

A  few  years  ago  a  physician  friend  of 
Mr.  Philip  D.  Armour  asked  him  why  he 
did  not  make  a  nutritious  preparation  of 
beef  that  would  be  a  food  upon  which  life 
could  be  sustained  independent  of  all  other 
foods.  He  said  this  was  needed  particu- 
larly for  the  invalid  and  the  convalescent, 
and  pointed  out  that  his  means  and  position 
as  a  packer  made  such  an  expensive  investi- 
gation possible.  Mr.  Armour  gave  instruc- 
tions to  his  chemist  to  start  the  work,  and  as 
a  result  "Soluble  Beef"  was  placed  upon 
the  market. 

"  Soluble  Beef"  differs  from  beef  extract 
in  that  it  is  the  real  substance  of  the  meat — 
fibre  and  all — predigested  and  concentrated. 
An  idea  of  its  nutritive  value  may  be  had 
by  comparing  it  with  raw  beef  juice,  which 
204 


CAR  LINES  AND  THE  PEOPLE 

has  enjoyed  a  high  reputation  as  a  food  for 
the  sick.  Analysis  of  soluble  beef  shows 
that  it  contains  fifty-four  per  cent,  food 
value ;  raw  beef  juice  contains  from  two  to 
five  per  cent.  On  this  basis  one  teaspoon- 
ful  of  soluble  beef  is  equal  to  from  ten  to 
twenty-seven  teaspoonfuls  of  beef  juice. 
It  may  be  used  with  hot  water  without 
affecting  the  nutritive  value.  The  advan- 
tage of  such  food  to  the  invalid  or  convales- 
cent is  evident  to  all. 

It  is  impossible  to  pass  the  matter  of  the 
packer's    products   without   reference   to 
the  really  important  subject  of  oleomarga- 
rine.    During  the  Franco-Prussian  war, 
Mege  Mouries,  forced  by  the  conditions 
existing  in  Paris,  ascertained  that  the  oil 
expressed  from  beef  suet  was  similar  to  the 
oil  in  butter  fat,  and  when  churned  in  milk 
made  a  very  good  substitute  for  butter,  and 
the  resultant  product,  oleomargarine,  was 
given  to  the  world.    This  product  does  not 
contain  as  large  a  percentage  of  butyric  and 
205 


THE   PACKERS,   THE   PRIVATE 

other  volatile  acids  which  give  rancidity  to 
butter  as  does  butter  itself.  Therefore, 
oleomargarine  keeps  better  than  butter.  To 
the  lumberman,  the  miner,  the  sailor,  this 
product  gives  a  reliable  supply  of  butter 
food  which  he  could  not  obtain  if  he  were 
dependent  upon  butter.  The  animal  oils 
are  churned  in  milk,  worked,  salted  and 
handled  precisely  as  butter  and  the  product 
is  butter  made  by  chemical  methods  rather 
than  by  Nature.  The  attitude  of  the  dairy 
distributing  interests  of  the  country,  as 
voiced  by  Congressional  action,  has,  for  the 
time  being,  greatly  injured  the  oleomarga- 
rine business,  but  it  is,  nevertheless,  an 
article  of  high  merit  and  great  economic  im- 
portance. 

It  seems  impossible  to  believe  that  the 
laboring  portion  of  the  community  is  to  be 
deprived  of  a  healthful  and  cheap  article 
of  food  at  the  instigation  of  the  manufac- 
turers of  a  competing  article,  simply  be- 
cause of  its  competition.  The  internal  rev- 
206 


CAR  LINES  AND   THE  PEOPLE 

enue  laws  controlling  the  sale  of  oleomar- 
garine before  the  passage  of  the  Grout  bill 
protected  the  consumer  in  that  they  re- 
quired original  packages  of  oleomargarine 
to  be  branded,  and  a  stamp  tax  of  two  cents 
a  pound  to  be  attached  to  each  package.  All 
of  this  was  under  the  control  of  the  Internal 
Eevenue  Department,  the  same  as  is  the 
manufacture  of  cigars  and  other  taxable 
commodities.  It  was  sold  under  GOVERN- 
MENT CONTROL.  There  was  no  possibility 
of  the  manufacturer  selling  *  *  oleo ' '  as  but- 
ter without  incurring  very  great  risks  and 
penalties,  and  it  is  safe  to  say  that  no  man- 
ufacturer attempted  it. 

Under  the  Grout  bill,  however,  the  re- 
strictions are  so  severe  that  the  packer  is 
practically  compelled  to  look  to  foreign 
countries  almost  exclusively  for  a  market 
for  this  clean,  wholesome  and  eminently 
serviceable  product.  One  of  the  unjust 
features  of  the  present  regulations  is  that 
which  prohibits  the  manufacturer  of  oleo- 
207 


margarine  from  using  any  coloring;  in 
other  words,  from  giving  it  the  attractive 
appearance  of  butter.  As  it  can  be  colored 
just  as  wholesomely  as  butter,  the  restric- 
tion is  purely  an  arbitrary  handicap  im- 
posed solely  to  limit  its  use — for  people  ac- 
customed to  use  butter  will  not  readily  and 
extensively  use  a  substitute  which  looks 
unlike  it.  When  this  product  of  the  packing 
house  is  given  the  commercial  chance  to 
which  its  merits  entitle  it,  the  results  will  be 
of  great  advantage  to  the  poorer  people  of 
this  country  and  to  the  cattle  raisers. 

Commissioner  of  Corporations  Garfield's 
report  on  the  beef  industry  shows  that  the 
legislation  against  oleomargarine  in  1902 
caused  a  very  marked  decrease  in  the  value 
of  the  fat  derived  from  beef  cattle.  The 
average  net  value  of  fat  from  cattle  killed 
in  Chicago,  his  report  shows,  fell  from  $4.31 
a  head  in  the  second  half  of  1902  to  $2.65  a 
head  in  the  second  half  of  1903.  For  all 
packing  centres  combined,  the  average  fall 
208 


CAR  LINES  AND   THE  PEOPLE 

in  value  between  these  two  periods  was 
$1.29  a  head.  Such  decrease  in  the  value  of 
products  derived  from  cattle  decreased,  of 
course,  the  price  that  could  be  paid  for 
cattle. 

The  packer  who  could  make  the  most  out 
of  these  products  could  afford  to  pay  and 
did  pay  more  for  the  live  steer  than  his 
competitor  who  was  not  so  progressive,  and 
in  consequence  he  got  his  pick  of  the  cattle. 
The  stock-grower  was  benefited  by  the 
higher  price  paid  for  the  live  animal,  and 
the  people  were  benefited  by  the  lower  sell- 
ing cost  of  the  beef  over  the  old  method. 

One  cannot  eat  his  cake  and  have  it,  too, 
and  the  reward  that  the  packer  received 
was  that  of  increased  business  and  the  de- 
creased cost  per  head  of  killing  cattle,  ow- 
ing to  his  much  heavier  kill;  but,  in  order 
to  cash  in  that  reward,  he  had  to  give  both 
the  stock-grower  and  the  public  a  part  of 
the  benefit  of  by-product  utilization. 

14  209 


THE  PACKERS,  THE  PRIVATE 


CHAPTER  X 

ONCE    MORE    THE    PRIVATE-CAB    LINE 

THE  interests  of  the  private-car  line 
and  the  packing  industries  are  so 
intimately  connected  that  the  future 
of  either  must  necessarily  involve,  to  a  con- 
siderable extent,  the  future  of  the  other. 

Broadly  speaking,  they  are  equally  the 
objects  of  attack  on  the  part  of  mistaken 
or  malicious  agitators;  but  the  sharpest 
fight  seems  to  be  focused  on  the  private-car 
lines,  and,  therefore,  I  shall  place  emphasis 
on  that  more  acute  line  of  campaign. 

If  the  hostile  legislation  now  aimed  at 
either  or  both  of  these  industries  becomes 
law,  there  is  no  question  that  the  men  who 
are  pushing  it  will  have  the  satisfaction  of 
having  dealt  a  hard  and  perhaps  fatal  blow 
to  the  packers  and  to  two  great  industries 
210 


CAR  LINES  AND   THE  PEOPLE 

which  have  done  more,  I  believe,  than  any 
other  two  industries  to  give  the  whole 
people  the  cardinal  comforts  of  good  liv- 
ing: wholesome  fresh  meats  and  fresh 
fruits  and  vegetables. 

But  their  satisfaction  will  not  end  with 
crippling  these  agencies  of  administration 
to  the  common  needs  of  humanity.  They 
will  also  awake  to  the  fact  that  theirs  will 
be  the  credit  of  dealing  a  staggering  blow 
to  scores  of  other  industries — to  the  cattle- 
raising  business,  to  the  calling  of  the  fruit 
and  the  vegetable  growers,  to  the  entire 
agriculture  of  the  country,  and,  finally,  to 
the  scores  of  other  industries  which  are 
sensitively  and  inseparably  interrelated 
with  the  animal,  fruit,  and  vegetable  indus- 
tries. 

Believing  this,  it  seems"  to  me  that  what- 
ever threatens  the  future  normal  and 
legitimate  development  of  the  business  in 
which  the  private-car  lines  and  the  packers 
are  engaged  directly  concerns  not  only 
211 


THE   PACKERS,   THE   PRIVATE 

every  business  man  of  this  country  but 
every  individual  in  the  United  States. 

Therefore,  I  offer  no  apology  for  meet- 
ing the  charges,  attacks,  and  criticisms 
which  have  been  made  public  in  certain 
magazines,  periodicals,  and  newspapers, 
and  in  the  public  utterances  of  the  enemies 
of  the  private-car  lines  and  of  the  packers. 

Although  the  assaults  have,  in  many 
cases,  been  personal — and  bitterly  so — 
and  the  provocation  is  strong  to  deal  with 
them  in  kind  and  to  show  their  personal 
animus  (as  I  can  in  every  instance),  they 
will  be  met  in  general  terms,  but,  I  believe, 
with  sufficient  definiteness. 

In  some  points  it  will  be  necessary  to 
refer  briefly  to  matters  already  touched 
upon,  but  only  for  the  purpose  of  giving 
a  clear  and  adequate  bird's-eye  view  of 
the  war  that  is  being  waged  to  disorganize 
industries  which  are  indispensable  to  the 
American  people,  and  to  make  their  future 
a  record  of  struggle,  and  perhaps  failure, 
212 


CAR  LINES  AND  THE  PEOPLE 

under  the  handicap  and  hardship  of  unfair 
and  unwarranted  legislation. 

The  misrepresentation  employed  by  the 
anti-car-line  champions  cannot  overcome 
the  force  of  this  simple  fact :  The  men  who 
pay  "extortionate  rates"  to  the  private-car 
lines — that  is,  the  actual  growers  and  ship- 
pers of  fruit — never  have  voiced  a  serious 
complaint  against  the  car  lines,  and  do  not 
now  favor  the  anti-car-line  agitation.  This 
does  not  mean  there  are  not  some  individ- 
ual or  association  complaints. 

I  feel  perfectly  safe  in  saying  that  more 
than  ninety  per  cent,  of  the  growers,  where 
private  refrigerator-cars  are  operated,  are 
in  favor  of  keeping  the  private-car  lines 
with  their  refrigeration  service  and  their 
exclusive  contracts  in  operation  as  they 
are.  The  better  business  man  the  fruit- 
grower is,  and  the  more  experience  he  has 
had  with  commercial  enterprises  other 
than  fruit-growing,  the  more  heartily  does 
213 


he  speaks  out  for  the  private-car  line  and 
its  exclusive  contract. 

Such  men  understand  the  risks  in  any 
business;  therefore  they  appreciate  what 
an  advantage  it  is  to  have  a  responsible 
concern  bound  to  furnish,  at  the  instant 
needed,  good  cars,  clean  cars,  and  enough 
cars,  with  prompt  and  certain  icing — ad- 
vantages which  they  seldom  had  when  rail- 
roads attempted  to  furnish  the  refrigera- 
tion, or  when  several  refrigerator-car  com- 
panies competed  for  their  business — ad- 
vantages which  they  cannot  hope  to  get  for 
years  to  come,  if  they  are  deprived  of  pri- 
vate cars  and  forced  to  depend  on  railroad 
refrigeration. 

Men  of  this  class  appreciate,  too,  that 
good  service  must  be  paid  for,  and  that 
poor  service  is  dear  at  any  price;  and  serv- 
ice in  the  handling  of  perishable  berries 
and  fruits  is  the  first  consideration,  as 
every  successful  grower  will  testify. 

If  the  most  extravagant  and  misleading 
214 


CAR  LINES  AND  THE  PEOPLE 

comparisons  that  have  been  made  between 
private-car  and  railroad  refrigeration 
rates  were  true,  the  difference  would 
amount,  on  peaches,  say,  to  ten  to  fifteen 
dollars  a  car.  The  practical  and  successful 
grower  reasons  thus : 

"When  I  get  good  refrigeration  and 
reliable  service  for  ten  or  fifteen  or  even 
twenty-five  dollars  a  car  more  than  I  would 
pay  for  poor  refrigeration  service,  the 
extra  money  is  well  invested.  That  extra 
ten  or  fifteen  dollars  a  car  will  mean,  in 
almost  every  instance,  from  fifty  to  one 
hundred  dollars  a  car  added  to  my  net 
returns  by  reason  of  my  fruit  getting  to 
market  in  good  condition. ' ' 

Is  it  not  a  distinct  credit  to  furnish  a 
quality  of  refrigeration  service  for  which 
growers  are  willing  to  pay  an  advanced 
price?  I  believe  it  is.  Here  and  there, 
of  course,  one  finds  a  " kicker."  Absolute 
unanimity  would  be  impossible  as  human 
nature  is  now  constituted,  but  the  kicker's 
215 


THE   PACKERS,   THE   PRIVATE 

grievance  can  always  be  traced  to  some 
individual  and  usually  accidental  happen- 
ing. 

Illustrating  this  general  point  as  to  the 
quality  of  service,  let  me  quote  from  one 
of  several  letters  now  on  my  desk  from 
Koshkonong,  Missouri,  the  largest  peach- 
shipping  point  in  Missouri — letters  from 
growers  who  had  heard  that  the  private- 
car-line  service  might  be  withdrawn  from 
the  'Frisco  Railroad  System  this  year.  Mr. 
T.  M.  Culver,  who  manages  five  hundred 
acres  of  Elberta  peach  orchard,  writes : 

"I,  as  well  as  a  lot  of  other  peach- 
growers  at  this  place,  have  planted  and  are 
still  planting  thousands  of  trees,  and  not 
by  any  means  the  least  incentive  of  our 
large  plantings  is  the  excellent  service  we 
get  from  the  Armour  Car  Lines.  If  you 
say  that  we  will  have  no  more  Armour  cars 
in  which  to  ship  our  peaches,  it  will  be  the 
greatest  disappointment  to  me  I  have  ever 
met  with  in  my  peach-growing  experience. 
216 


CAR  LINES  AND  THE  PEOPLE 

I  firmly  believe  it  would  be  a  good  many 
years  before  such  a  service  as  Armour's 
could  be  had  on  the  'Frisco. 

"I  have  shipped  hundreds  of  cars  of 
peaches,  and  not  one  complaint  have  I  ever 
had  as  to  condition  on  arrival,  nor  have  my 
commission  men  ever  complained  to  me 
about  extortionate  charges.  Neither  have 
I  any  complaint  to  make  along  this  line." 
And  Mr.  Culver  closes  with  the  assertion 
that  the  loss  of  the  private-car  service  "will 
be  disastrous  to  peach-growers." 

I  could  quote  similar  expressions  by 
scores  from  fruit-growers — practical  and 
successful  fruit-growers — in  all  parts  of 
this  country  from  Michigan  to  Georgia  and 
from  Delaware  to  California. 

Now  just  a  final  word  on  the  real  animus 
of  this  fight  on  the  private-car  lines.  Fruit- 
handling  commission  men — not  all  commis- 
sion men,  but  some — have  been  forced  to 
come  out  in  the  open  and  admit  that  they 
are  trying  to  kill  the  private-car  lines  if 
217 


THE   PACKEES,   THE   PRIVATE 

they  can,  and  cripple  them  if  extermination 
is  not  possible.  Hostile  legislation  is  their 
machine  gun. 

One  of  the  chief  arguments  they  have 
used  in  enlisting  the  aid  of  representatives, 
senators,  writers,  and  other  men  who  make 
sentiment  and  legislation  is  the  cry  that  the 
private-car  lines  are  monopolistic  in  char- 
acter, grasping  in  purpose,  and  that  they 
seek  to  control  the  handling  and  refrigera- 
tion of  fruits. 

Portraits  of  the  leaders  of  this  band  of 
public-spirited  commission  men  adorn  the 
pages  of  magazines  and  periodicals  in 
which  appear  the  arguments  inspired  by 
them.  They  are  hailed  as  the  champions 
of  anti-monopoly,  the  protectors  of  the  peo- 
ple in  general  and  of  the  fruit-growers  in 
particular.  Their  mission  is  to  get  the 
oppressed  grower  out  from  under  the  heel 
of  the  private-car-line  magnate ;  to  liberate 
him  from  the  control  of  the  monopolist. 

Please  keep  all  this  in  mind  while  you 
218 


CAB  LINES  AND  THE  PEOPLE 

read  a  few  extracts  taken  from  the  address 
of  President  Streight,  delivered  before  the 
Annual  Convention  of  the  Western  Fruit 
Jobbers'  Association,  held  in  Omaha  on 
December  28,  1904.  My  quotations  are 
made  from  the  pamphlet  sent  out  by  the 
Association  as  the  official  report  of  its  pro- 
ceedings. The  italics  are  my  own.  Here 
is  the  significant  declaration  made  by  the 
official  head  of  the  Western  Fruit  Jobbers' 
Association : 

"The  great  percentage  of  the  commod- 
ities we  handle  are  extremely  perishable. 
On  this  account  our  business  is  of  a  more 
hazardous  nature  than  any  ordinary  mer- 
chandising. The  perishable  nature  of  our 
commodities  alone  is  sufficiently  hazardous 
without  the  aid  of  -fluctuating  prices,  over- 
stocks, unfriendly,  illegitimate,  and  un- 
profitable competition. 

"We  should  have  an  organization  which 
would  take  in  every  legitimate  and  honor- 
219 


THE   PACKERS,   THE   PRIVATE 

able  jobber  of  fruit  and  produce  in  the 
Middle  and  Western  States,  with  the  object 
of -reducing  the  hazardous  nature  of  our 
business  to  the  greatest  possible  extent. 

"We  cannot  change  the  commodities  we 
handle,  but  we  can  collect  and  disseminate 
information  for  the  benefit  of  each  mem- 
ber. We  can  form  local  and  district  organ- 
izations and  eliminate  to  some  extent  UN- 
FRIENDLY AND  UNPROFITABLE  COMPETITION, 

lessen  the  overstocking  and  fluctuating  of 
local  markets,  and  become  business  and 
social  friends  instead  of  simply  unfriendly 
competitors  throughout  the  territory. " 

Another  member  of  the  Association  also 
addressed  the  Omaha  meeting  in  the  fol- 
lowing significant  language : 

1  'But  conditions  are  changed.  A  large 
part  of  the  business  is  now  done  on  the 
f.  o.  b.  plan,  or  else,  if  consigned,  the  ship- 
ments are  confined  to  a  few  reliable  houses 
who  have  the  absolute  confidence  of  the 
220 


CAB  LINES  AND   THE  PEOPLE 

shipper,  and  the  shipper  feels  that  by  loy- 
ally standing  by  the  receiver  through  thick 
and  thin  he  will  achieve  greater  results 
than  in  the  'old  rainbow-chasing  days.' 

"One  of  the  greatest  drawbacks  of  the 
present  method  of  buying  f .  o.  b.,  especially 
has  it  so  proved  the  past  season,  is  the  dis- 
position on  the  part  of  our  representatives 
to  outbid  one  another.  I  have  a  case  in 
mind  that  occurred  in  Louisiana  last 
spring.  Two  representatives  of  Minneapo- 
lis houses,  actuated  by  their  jealousy, 
wanted  all  the  strawberries  from  a  well- 
known  point.  The  result  was  that  prices 
advanced  from  three  dollars  and  twenty- 
five  cents  one  day  to  four  dollars  and 
twenty-five  cents  the  next  day,  this  ivithout 
increasing  the  production  one  iota. 

"Another  case  is  the  Van  Buren  deal. 
Texas  is  practically  through  shipping  when 
Van  Buren  begins,  and,  as  the  latter  is  the 
first  in  Arkansas  to  move,  their  berries  are 
eagerly  sought  after. 

221 


THE   PACKERS,   THE   PRIVATE 

"Last  season  there  were  probably  ten 
men  for  every  car  the  first  week,  and,  of 
course,  the  local  shipper  took  the  advan- 
tage of  our  necessities,  boosting  prices  out 
of  sight,  cleaning  up  from  three  hundred 
dollars  to  five  hundred  dollars  a  car,  while 

by  a  LITTLE  CONCERTED  ACTION  ON  OUR  PART 

just  as  many  berries  could  have  been 
secured  at  probably  a  dollar  a  case  less. 

"This  is  a  point  we  should  seriously  con- 
sider, not  that  I  propose  a  combination  on 
prices  so  much  as  I  do  to  avoid  bunching 
our  men  at  one  particular  point  and  bulling 
the  market.  Moreover,  a  close  relationship 
should  be  encouraged  among  our  buyers 
and  solicitors.  Let  it  be  understood  that 
when  we  cannot  land  a  shipment  ourselves, 
or  else  have  all  we  can  use,  we  see  that  a 
member  of  the  Western  Fruit  Jobbers' 
Association  is  favored. 

1 '  Now  let  me  put  the  question  right  here : 
Will  every  member  of  this  Association 
make  it  a  point  to  instruct  his  field-man,  as 
222 


CAE  LINES  AND  THE  PEOPLE 

well  as  do  it  himself,  to  use  his  influence  to 
advance  the  interests  of  our  Association 
among  shippers,  and,  when  it  is  impossible 
to  secure  a  shipment  for  his  own  house, 
make  an  eff ort  to  see  that  some  other  house 
in  our  Association  is  favored  in  preference 
to  an  outside  concern?" 

Could  any  appeal  for  combination  against 
the  grower  and  shipper  be  more  clear  than 
this  convention  declaration?  I  think  not. 
The  most  ingenuous  and  unsophisticated 
fruit-grower  cannot  fail  to  understand  the 
hostile  intent  of  language  like  this. 

And  again  I  ask:  Could  there  be  a 
clearer,  a  more  definite  and  authoritative 
verification  of  my  statement  that  the  work 
of  the  private-car  lines  in  bringing  com- 
petitive buyers  into  the  fruit-growing  dis- 
tricts, there  to  hustle  for  business  and  bid 
against  each  other,  has  been  of  inestimable 
benefit  to  the  grower  and  shipper  ? 

It  is  an  official  confirmation  of  my  state- 
223 


THE   PACKERS,   THE   PRIVATE 

ment  made  out  of  the  mouth  of  an  avowed 
enemy  of  the  private-car  lines. 

It  is  a  confession,  published  in  the  camp 
of  the  enemy,  that  competition  on  the  part 
of  the  buyers — forced  into  the  field  by  the 
private  refrigerator-car — results  in  great 
gain  to  the  grower,  brings  him  far  higher 
prices,  and  has  liberated  him  from  the 
domination  of  the  commission  man. 

There  is  not  a  grower  in  any  district 
served  by  the  private  refrigerator-car — at 
least  none  who  was  there  in  the  fruit  busi- 
ness before  the  coming  of  the  car — who 
will  not  admit  that  the  buyers  followed  the 
car  into  the  field,  and  that  the  private  car 
revolutionized  the  commission  business, 
bringing  the  commission  man  to  the  grower, 
whereas  the  grower  had  before  been 
obliged  to  seek  the  commission  man  and 
accept  his  terms. 

The  real  attitude  of  the  commission  men 
toward  the  growers  and  toward  the  ques- 
tion of  " combination"  for  the  purpose  of 
224 


CAB  LINES  AND  THE  PEOPLE 

squelching  " unfriendly  competition"  can 
only  be  fully  appreciated  in  these  utter- 
ances of  the  official  heads  of  the  Western 
Fruit  Jobbers'  Association.  The  cry  of 
''monopoly"  and  "combination"  cer- 
tainly comes  with  rare  grace  from  this  or- 
ganization ! 

Some  of  these  commission  men  lose  all 
sense  of  perspective — and  of  humor,  too — 
when  they  undertake  to  explain  how  they 
love  high-class  refrigeration  for  its  own 
sake,  but  are  nobly  battling  against  the 
monopoly. 

One  spokesman,  in  a  recent  deliverance, 
grows  eloquent  with  virtuous  rage  when  he 
contemplates  the  " horrible  conditions" 
imposed  upon  refrigerator-car  service  by 
the  "Armour  monopoly."  Further  along 
he  avers  that  Armour  cars  "are  to  the 
refrigerator-cars  of  the  whole  country  but 
as  a  drop  in  the  bucket." 

If  "but  a  drop  in  the  bucket,"  I  ask, 
How  can  it  be  a  monopoly  that  is  strang- 
15  225 


THE   PACKEES,   THE   PRIVATE 

ling  the  fruit  industry?  Again,  the  spokes- 
man of  this  particular  commission-man 
coterie  makes  the  specious  plea  that  he  and 
his  associates  are  not  trying  to  drive  pri- 
vate-car lines  out  of  the  business,  but  are 
only  seeking  to  " regulate"  the  rates;  then 
to  prove  his  words  he  quotes  a  lawyer-like 
statement  to  the  effect  that  "  legislation 
cannot  be  framed, "  under  the  Constitution, 
to  "prevent  formation  of  independent  car 
lines  for  hire  of  cars  to  railways. ' ' 

Quite  so,  but  these  very  men  who  are 
so  sure  of  what  cannot  be  done  under  the 
Constitution  are  working  night  and  day  at 
Washington  for  a  law  that  will  restrict 
refrigeration  service  charges  to  the  actual 
cost  of  ice,  pound  by  pound.  Such  a  law 
would  put  the  refrigerator-car  lines  out  of 
business  as  effectually  as  would  a  law  flatly 
prohibiting  them. 

Efficient  refrigeration  service,  with  ade- 
quate car-supply,  ice-supply,  icing,  re-icing, 
and  inspection,  cannot  be  performed  by 
226 


CAR  LINES  AND   THE  PEOPLE 

any  line,  railroad  or  any  other  agency,  for 
actual  cost  of  ice,  unless  it  is  done  at  an 
actual  loss. 

But  with  all  their  evasions,  these  com- 
mission men  cannot  get  away  from  this 
fact:  They  desire  to  drive  out  of  business 
the  private-car  lines  that  furnish  efficient 
refrigeration  service.  For  assistance  in 
this  they  rely  much  upon  that  trait  in  human 
nature  which  always  enables  a  falsehood 
to  travel  faster  than  the  truth,  and  they 
have  chosen  an  apt  time  for  such  a  cam- 
paign— a  time  when  the  public  mind  has 
been  poisoned  by  "  yellow"  agitation 
against  everything  bearing  the  name  of 
corporation,  and  by  demagogic  appeal  for 
political  effect. 

All  this  was  admitted — inadvertently, 
no  doubt — when  the  president  of  the  Na- 
tional League  of  Commission  Merchants,  in 
convention  at  Milwaukee  last  December, 
summed  up  the  results  of  the  League's 
anti-private-car-line  fight  in  these  words : 
227 


THE   PACKERS,    THE   PRIVATE 

"But  we  feel  that  it  is  at  this  session  of 
Congress  that  our  labors  must  be  rewarded 
and  the  necessary  legislation  enacted,  and 
we  feel  encouraged  to  believe  that,  if  not 
from  the  merits  of  our  cause,  then  FROM 

THE  POLITICAL  EXPEDIENCY  of  OUT  situation, 

this  will  be  brought  about." 

Could  a  confession  be  plainer  ? 

But  I  hope  that  I  shall  not  be  misunder- 
stood as  classing  all  commission  men  with 
the  ones  I  have  been  discussing.  Nothing 
could  be  more  remote  from  my  thought. 
Many  of  the  strongest  houses  in  the  trade 
have  no  sympathy  with  the  fight  being  made 
in  the  name  of  the  Western  Fruit  Jobbers' 
Association  and  the  National  League  of 
Commission  Merchants.  Members  of  these 
organizations  have  not  hesitated  to  take 
a  stand  against  them. 

A  case  in  point  is  J.  D.  Hendrickson,  of 
Philadelphia,  a  former  president  of  the 
National  League,  who  went  to  Washington 
228 


CAR  LINES  AND   THE  PEOPLE 

last  year  and  testified  that  private-car-line 
service  was  a  necessity  in  the  perishable 
fruit  business.  Mr.  Hendrickson  is  both 
commission  merchant  and  peach-grower; 
and  I  believe  practically  every  commission 
merchant  like  him,  who  also  knows  the  fruit 
business  as  a  grower,  stands  with  him  on 
the  side  of  the  private-car  lines. 

No  longer  ago  than  January  20,  1906, 
F.  Newhall  &  Sons,  of  Chicago,  members 
of  the  National  League,  wrote  to  the  Fruit 
Trade  Journal  and  Produce  Record,  the 
official  organ  of  the  commission  trade,  pro- 
testing against  the  anti-car-line  movement. 
I  quote  a  few  characteristic  sentences : 

"We  believe  our  firm  is  only  one  among 
a  great  many  that  have  been  benefited, 
instead  of  injured,  by  the  private-car  lines. 

"Our  experience  with  refrigerator-cars 
before  the  private-car  line  came  into  exist- 
ence was  a  sad  one.  You  could  seldom  get 
a  refrigerator-car  from  the  railroad  com- 
229 


THE   PACKERS,   THE   PEIVATE 

pany  when  you  ordered  one,  and  often 
when  you  did  it  was  a  very  poor  one,  not 
suitable  for  the  purpose  that  you  wanted  it 
for.  .  .  .  We  have  made  fifty  claims  for 
loss  and  damage  on  fruit  shipped  in  refrig- 
erator-cars furnished  by  railroads  to  one 
for  fruit  shipped  in  private-car  lines,  such 
as  the  Armour  Car  Lines. 

"While  they  (the  refrigerator  rates  of 
the  private-car  lines)  are  higher  than 
charged  by  some  railroads,  it  has  always 
seemed  cheaper  in  the  end,  because  our 
goods  arrived  in  better  condition  and  were 
worth  more  to  us  than  the  difference  in 
refrigeration  charges. 

* '  The  private-car  line  refrigerators  have 
been  a  very  great  benefit  to  us  in  furnish- 
ing good  refrigerators  to  move  our  ship- 
ments in  throughout  the  winter  season, 
when  no  charge  is  made  for  icing.  .  .  . 

"If  we  find  icing  charges  too  high,  let 
us  go  to  the  heads  of  companies  controlling 
the  lines  making  the  unreasonable  charges 
230 


CAR  LINES  AND   THE  PEOPLE 

and  try  to  induce  them  to  readjust  their 
rates.  We  can  accomplish  more  in  this 
way  than  by  trying  to  put  them  out  of 

business.  .  .  . 

i 

"We  believe  in  a  square  deal  for  all,  and 
we  know  there  is  a  very  large  element  in  the 
fruit  and  produce  business  in  the  United 
States  which  believes  as  we  do. ' ' 

The  business  genius  and  commercial 
pioneering,  the  enterprising,  organizing  and 
executive  abilities  of  the  original  packers 
have  been  among  the  most  potent  influences 
in  building  up  the  country.  Why  shouldn't 
they  be  entitled  to  some  credit  for  it? 

They  were  looking  out  for  themselves 
when  they  were  building  those  businesses. 
Of  course  they  were.  But  that  is  no  answer. 
If  we  examine  the  intimate  personal  annals 
of  the  heroes  of  history,  we  shall  find  but 
few  who  started  upon  their  respective  roads 
lighted  only  by  the  pure  white  flame  of  holy 
resolve  to  uplift  humanity.  Blink  at  it  as 
231 


THE   PACKERS,   THE   PRIVATE 

we  may,  there  is  a  touch  of  self-interest  in 
the  best  of  men. 

The  Revolutionary  fathers,  as  we  rever- 
ently call  them,  sought,  in  the  beginning, 
only  to  relieve  themselves  from  distasteful 
governmental  restrictions  and  odious  taxes. 
They  grew  into  opportunity  and  resolve  to 
build  a  new  nation  on  a  new  foundation. 
And  to  the  end  of  their  labors — but  it  de- 
tracts not  at  all  from  the  honor  due  them — 
they  were  upborne  by  the  desire  to  better 
the  material,  worldly  condition  of  them- 
selves and  fellows.  Lincoln,  running  for 
the  legislature  while  he  was  still  a  primitive 
country  storekeeper  and  an  unsuccessful 
one ;  Grant,  volunteering  for  the  war  of  the 
rebellion,  were  hardly  moved  entirely  by 
visions  of  liberating  a  race  or  saving  a 
nation.  They  were  simply  breaking  into 
those  fields  where  they  knew  their  talents 
would  have  freest  play  and  where  they  be- 
lieved they  could  do  the  best  for  themselves. 
So  true  an  idealist  as  the  late  John  Hay 
232 


CAE  LINES  AND  THE  PEOPLE 

said  in  his  article  on  "Franklin  in  France/' 
in  a  recent  magazine:  "It  is  the  infallible 
sign  of  decadence  in  a  man  or  a  government 
when  he  undertakes  work  which  cannot  pay 
expenses." 

The  original  packers  were  born  into  a 
commercial  age.  They  were  filled  with  the 
spirit  of  the  times.  They  saw  opportunities 
lying  at  their  feet — opportunities  to  widen 
their  own  commercial  field  and  that  of  all 
around  them — opportunities  to  create  new 
enterprises — opportunities,  if  you  please, 
to  make  two  blades  of  grass  grow  where  but 
one  grew  before.  Made  as  they  were,  they 
could  no  more  smother  their  energies  than 
the  born  artist  can  keep  his  fingers  out  of 
the  paint  box.  They  jumped  in,  and  the 
pioneering,  the  creating,  and  the  organizing 
achieved  by  them  and  men  of  their  stamp, 
has  played  a  large  part  in  making  this  coun- 
try the  marvel  of  history  in  rapid  develop- 
ment and  commercial  expansion. 

Look  again  at  the  much-belabored  car 
233 


THE   PACKERS,   THE   PRIVATE 

lines  that  are  but  one  branch  of  the  business 
my  father  developed — a  by-product,  as  it 
were,  of  his  packing-house  ventures — and 
note  their  influence  in  just  one  state — 
Georgia.  That  state  is  enjoying  a  season 
of  prosperity  unknown  since  the  war. 
Higher  cotton  prices  have  brought  a  meas- 
ure of  that  prosperity,  but  the  fruitful 
peach  tree  must  be  credited  with  a  share. 
And  the  peach  tree  brings  profit  to  the 
planter  only  by  means  of  the  refrigerator- 
car. 

That  statement  is  not  too  strong  by  a 
hair's  weight  when  you  consider  Georgia. 
The  peach  cannot  go  far  to  market  in  quan- 
tities unless  it  goes  under  ice.  Georgia  has 
no  nearby  markets  of  consequence.  Its  peo- 
ple could  not  profitably  grow  peaches  for 
market  on  a  large  scale  if  they  could  not  get 
facilities  for  shipping  under  ice.  They  will 
all  tell  you  so.  And  they  were  encouraged 
to  grow  peaches  for  the  larger  markets,  in 
the  first  instance,  because  they  were  offered 
234 


CAB  LINES  AND  THE  PEOPLE 

such  facilities  by  the  refrigerator-car  serv- 
ice of  the  private-car  lines. 

As  a  typical  instance  of  what  has  been 
done  by  the  private-car  lines  for  peach 
growers  and  for  the  community  at  large  in 
half  a  dozen  counties  of  northwestern 
Georgia,  I  have  in  mind  a  little  settlement 
in  Chattooga  County.  It  is  tucked  away 
1 '  miles  from  nowhere ' '  under  the  shadow  of 
the  mountains.  For  transportation,  it  de- 
pends upon  a  little  railroad  that  is  less  than 
one  hundred  miles  long  and  that  has  no  road 
but  itself  to  depend  upon — no  alliance  with 
any  large  system.  It  is,  or  was,  a  country 
of  discouraging  clay  hills  and  rock  out- 
crops, scrubby  timber  and  uninviting  as- 
pect. 

The  first  shipment  of  peaches  out  of  that 
community  was  nine  years  ago  last  summer. 
Summer  before  last — the  crop  last  summer 
was  light — that  one  locality  shipped  about 
four  hundred  car-loads,  and  those  car-loads 
brought  back  hundreds  of  thousands  of  dol- 
235 


THE  PACKEES,   THE   PRIVATE 

lars,  net.  The  little  town  that  forms  the 
chief  shipping-point  is  putting  on  airs  with 
brick  buildings.  It  has  a  prosperous  bank, 
whose  stockholders  boast  that  it  paid  thir- 
teen per  cent,  the  first  year  of  its  exist- 
ence. The  entire  community  is  prosperous. 
Men  who  were  living  in  cabin-like  * '  shacks ' ' 
a  few  years  ago  are  building  handsome 
residences  and  sending  their  children  away 
to  school.  Men  who  were  poor  a  few 
years  back — poor  even  for  north  Georgia 
"crackers" — are  now  well-to-do — wealthy 
as  wealth  counts  among  farmers — and  talk 
glibly  of  $10,000  and  $12,000  cleared  in  a 
H season  on  fifty  or  sixty  acres  of  peach 
orchards.  Land  that  was  worth  no  more 
than  $1.00  an  acre  ten  years  ago  is  now 
held  at  $8.00  and  $10.00  an  acre,  even  with- 
out peach  trees  on  it;  when  bearing  an 
orchard  it  brings  three  times  that  amount. 
Fruit  and  vegetable  growing  in  Georgia 
was  truly  an  infant  industry,  a  dwarf,  in 
fact,  until  the  private  refrigerator-car 
236 


CAR  LINES  AND  THE  PEOPLE 

lines  gave  it  a  chance  to  grow.  Small  quan- 
tities of  peaches  reached  an  outside  market 
by  express  in  boxes  to  Savannah  and  then 
to  New  York  and  Philadelphia  by  boat. 
But  there  was  no  life  in  the  business.  It 
was  cramped  by  restricted  and  expensive 
shipping  facilities.  It  was  not  worth  the 
name  of  an  industry.  The  product  was 
scarcely  taken  into  account  by  the  railroads 
as  an  element  in  the  freight  producing  re- 
sources of  the  state. 

In  the  early  '90s  the  private-car  lines 
went  into  Georgia  and  began  to  show  its 
people  how  they  could  reach  the  fruit  mar- 
kets of  the  entire  country  by  means  of  the 
refrigerator-car  service,  and  land  fruits  at 
destination  in  condition  to  command  a  good 
price.  Three  or  four  seasons  of  experiment 
with  private-car  service  were  so  conclusive 
to  the  growers  and  so  stimulated  the  grow- 
ing of  peaches  that  the  railroads  were  sim- 
ply overwhelmed  by  the  demand  upon  them 
for  moving  the  peach  crop.  They  had  to 
237 


THE   PACKERS,   THE   PRIVATE 

call  on  the  private-car  lines  for  refrigerator- 
cars,  and  then  revise  schedules,  rearrange 
plans,  and  make  special  arrangements  for 
moving  the  fruit  cars.  Since  that  time  fruit 
and  vegetable  growing  has  climbed  by  leaps 
and  bounds  to  the  rank  of  a  great  industry, 
and  is  still  advancing  to  a  higher  position. 

Unfortunately  there  are  no  accurate  data 
showing  how  the  industry  has  grown  from 
year  to  year  or  showing  exactly  the  point 
it  has  reached.  Some  of  the  railroads  tra- 
versing the  fruit  belt  have  undertaken  to 
tabulate  the  peach  business,  but  their  fig- 
ures are  incomplete.  They  are  sufficient, 
however,  to  warrant  the  statement  that 
fruit  and  vegetable  growing  ranks  second 
only  to  cotton  in  bringing  prosperity  to 
Georgia  people,  and  in  earning  for  Georgia 
her  favorite  title  of  "Empire  State  of  the 
South. " 

These  incomplete  railroad  statistics  show 
that  peach  growing  alone  is  a  considerable 
industry  in  more  than  sixty  different  coun- 
238 


CAR  LINES  AND   THE   PEOPLE 

ties  in  Georgia.  The  state  peach-growers' 
association  estimates  seventeen  million 
peach  trees  in  their  state.  Not  all  are  in 
bearing,  but  are  very  near  it.  In  north 
Georgia,  peach  trees  are  planted  one  hun- 
dred and  sixty  to  the  acre ;  in  south  Georgia 
as  high  as  one  hundred  and  ninety-six  to 
the  acre.  The  total  acreage  in  the  state, 
therefore,  must  be  in  the  neighborhood  of 
one  hundred  thousand  acres ;  and  it  is  grow- 
ing all  the  time. 

This  immense  peach  acreage  is  divided 
up  among  individual  growers — farmers — 
whose  orchards  range  all  the  way  from 
five  acres  to  twelve  hundred  acres.  A  peach 
tree  in  bearing  will  yield  anywhere  from 
one  crate  to  five  crates  of  peaches,  accord- 
ing to  its  location,  its  condition  and  the  care 
given  to  it.  This  being  so,  it  is  apparent 
that  the  peach  growing  industry,  fostered 
by  the  private  refrigerator-car,  is  worth 
literally  millions  of  dollars  annually  to  the 
state  of  Georgia. 

239 


THE   PACKERS,   THE   PRIVATE 

This  money  is  not  for  a  few ;  does  not  go 
into  the  treasury  of  a  " trust."  It  is  dis- 
tributed direct  among  thousands  of  indi- 
vidual growers.  To  the  great  majority  of 
peach  growers  it  is  the  largest  part  of  their 
annual  income;  and  to  a  considerable  de- 
gree it  is  new  income,  additional  income.  If 
it  were  not  received  from  peaches  it  would 
not  be  received  from  any  product.  For  the 
point  cannot  be  over-emphasized  that  much 
of  the  Georgia  peach  crop  is  grown  on  land 
that  was  all  but  worthless  and  unproductive 
until  planted  with  peach  trees. 

But  the  benefit  to  the  people  from  the 
development  of  this  industry  does  not  stop 
at  the  peach  grower.  Think  of  the  addi- 
tional millions  of  money  put  into  circula- 
tion in  each  district  by  the  expenditure  for 
labor  in  the  orchard,  for  the  harvesting  and 
handling  by  laborers  and  railroad  crews, 
for  baskets  and  crates,  for  fertilizer,  and  so 
on.  The  fertilizer  industry,  already  a  large 
one  in  the  South,  has  been  stimulated  by  the 
240 


CAB  LINES  AND  THE  PEOPLE 

new  fruit  and  vegetable  growing  until  the 
railroads  are  hardly  able  to  handle  its  prod- 
uct during  the  three  months  in  which  it 
must  be  handled.  The  effect  of  all  this  can 
hardly  be  appreciated  unless  studied  at 
close  range.  The  state  is  enjoying  unpar- 
alleled prosperity  and  it  is  prosperity  of  the 
people  throughout  the  country  districts  like 
the  prosperity  we  heard  of  from  the  West  a 
few  years  back — the  farmer  building  a  new 
house,  presenting  a  piano  to  his  daughter 
and  setting  up  his  son  with  a  young  horse 
and  a  top  buggy. 

Higher  priced  cotton  has  been  a  big  ele- 
ment, but  the  peach  is  entitled  to  a  share  of 
the  credit.  Proof  of  it?  In  almost  every 
little  town  of  north  Georgia  you  can  see  the 
proof — brick  and  stone  buildings  built  out 
of  peach  orchard  profits — handsome  new 
residences  built  by  men  who  have  made  a 
fortune  in  peaches  and  have  moved  into 
town  from  the  hills  to  take  life  easy  and 
give  their  children  advantages. 
16  241 


THE   PACKERS,   THE   PRIVATE 

Cantaloupe  culture  is  coming  to  be  an 
important  part  of  this  Georgia  develop- 
ment, thanks  to  the  private  car.  Statistics 
on  cantaloupes  are  even  less  complete  than 
on  peaches,  but  our  agents  report  a  rapid 
growth  in  the  industry.  Many  farmers  in 
south  Georgia  are  devoting  some  of  their 
very  best  land  to  growing  cantaloupes.  It 
requires  no  stretch  of  imagination  to  see 
cantaloupe  growing  lead  to  ventures  into 
other  fruit  and  early  vegetable  crops  for 
which  there  is  always  a  demand  in  northern 
markets  when  they  can  be  landed  there  in 
good  condition  and  at  reasonable  expense — 
as  they  can  be  by  the  means  of  the  private 
refrigerator-car. 

There  is  a  reflex  benefit  from  this 
diversification  of  the  southern  farmers' 
crop.  For  years  cotton  was  king,  and 
king-like,  lorded  so  absolutely  as  to  be- 
come at  times  disagreeable.  Over-pro- 
duction of  cotton  sent  prices  down  to  the 
no-profit  point.  Recent  effort  has  been 
242 


CAR  LINES  AND  THE  PEOPLE 

to  restrict  cotton  production — even  to  the 
extent  of  letting  cotton  land  lie  idle  and  so 
better  the  price.  This  has  had  some  effect. 
Every  acre  of  cotton  land  put  into  fruit  and 
vegetable  growing  reduces  by  so  much  the 
possible  cotton  acreage,  and  helps,  by  so 
much  restricted  production,  to  boost  cotton 
prices  without  the  wastefulness  of  land 
lying  idle. 

The  packing  industry  has  helped  teach 
the  western  and  northwestern  farmer  to 
diversify  his  product  by  feeding  cattle  for 
beef  instead  of  blindly  depending  upon 
wheat  only,  or  corn  only,  and  suffering  in 
years  of  one-crop  failure  or  over-produc- 
tion. The  private-car-line  refrigerator  serv- 
ice is  helping  teach  the  southern  farmer 
to  diversify  by  raising  the  fruits  and  veg- 
etables that  northern  markets  want  and 
cannot  get  elsewhere  in  sufficient  quantities. 


243 


THE   PACKERS,   THE   PRIVATE 
CHAPTER  XI 

JUGGLING  THE  FACTS 

NOT  long  ago  the  press  of  the  whole 
country  united  in  tribute  to  the 
worthiness  of  a  great  merchant  who 
lay  dead. 

The  immense  commercial  fabric  which 
Marshall  Field  left  behind  him  was  a  monu- 
ment to  the  practice  of  one  fixed  business 
rule:  "To  sell  always  a  good  article  at  a 
fair  price."  The  private-car-line  interests 
which  I  represent  ask  to  be  judged  by  no 
more  lenient  standard. 

We  have  been  in  the  refrigeration-serv- 
ice business  for  twenty  years.  We  have 
been  successful — so  successful  the  demand 
has  required  that  every  dollar  earned  by 
the  car  lines,  and  more,  has  had  to  go  back 
into  new  and  improved  equipment  and  or- 
ganization to  take  care  of  the  new  business 
that  was  made  possible  by  the  service.  I 
244 


CAB  LINES  AND   THE  PEOPLE 

do  not  believe  this  could  have  happened  if 
the  car  lines  had  not  sold  a  good  article  at 
a  fair  price. 

An  article  in  a  recent  magazine  contains 
this  paragraph:  "By  giving  his  business 
to  one  railroad,  and  taking  it  from  another, 
he  (Armour)  could  almost  make  or  ruin  the 
profits  of  the  companies  concerned.  Here 
was  the  Pere  Marquette  Eailroad,  for  ex- 
ample, over  which  was  shipped  the  bulk  of 
the  fruit  grown  in  the  rich  districts  of 
western  Michigan.  The  Pere  Marquette 
was  a  weak  railroad,  hungry  for  more  traf- 
fic. Armour  went  to  the  eager  officers  of 
the  Pere  Marquette  and  guaranteed  to  give 
them  forty  cars  of  meat  a  week,  in  return 
for  which  the  Pere  Marquette  agreed  to 
use  none  but  Armour's  fruit-cars  for  its 
fruit-shipments.  The  Pere  Marquette  had 
a  few  refrigerator-cars  of  its  own,  with 
which  it  served  it  customers ;  but  under  the 
new  contract  it  could  not  supply  its  own  cars 
to  the  people  along  its  own  lines." 
245 


That  statement  is  misleading  as  a  whole 
and  specifically  false  in  detail.  The  writer 
of  it  never  would  have  ventured  to  make  it 
if  he  had  sought  the  facts.  He  could  have 
easily  learned  them  from  the  Interstate 
Commerce  Commission's  records,  which  are 
open  and  accessible  to  all.  Now  what  are 
the  facts  I  They  are  simply  as  follows : 

The  Pere  Marquette  Railroad  undertook, 
in  1901,  to  furnish  refrigeration  for  the 
fruit  business  along  its  line,  using  a  few  old 
refrigerator-cars  of  its  own  and  borrowing 
from  other  lines.  That  season,  with  its  bad 
service  and  consequent  heavy  fruit-losses, 
is  still  remembered  with  a  shudder  by  Mich- 
igan peach-growers. 

For  the  following  season,  1902,  the  Pere 
Marquette  Railroad  made  an  experimental 
contract — an  exclusive  contract — with  the 
Armour  Car  Lines.  When  that  shipping 
season  was  over,  the  Pere  Marquette  Rail- 
road officials  made  inquiry  among  the 
growers  and  shippers  as  to  how  they  had 
246 


CAB  LINES  AND  THE  PEOPLE 

been  served  and  how  they  liked  the  exclu- 
sive arrangement.  The  response  was  so 
heartily  in  favor  of  the  Armour  service  and 
the  guarantees  of  the  exclusive  contract 
that  the  Pere  Marquette  immediately  made 
another  exclusive  contract  with  the  Armour 
Car  Lines  for  three  seasons. 

The  first,  or  experimental,  contract  was 
executed  July  18,  1902 ;  the  second  was  exe- 
cuted on  December  23,  1902. 

The  meat-carrying  contract  between  the 
Pere  Marquette  Railroad  and  Armour  & 
Co.  was  executed  on  August  1, 1904.  There- 
fore, this  meat  contract,  by  means  of 
tvhich  the  writer  in  question  says  the  fruit 
contract  was  extorted  from  the  Pere  Mar- 
quette. ivas  not  made  until  more  than  two 
years  after  the  execution  of  the  first  fruit- 
car  contract  and  nineteen  months  after  the 
second  fruit-car  contract,  and  there  was 
nothing  unusual  or  "special"  in  the  meat- 
carrying  contract.  Other  packers  made 
247 


THE   PACKERS,   THE  PRIVATE 

similar  agreements  with  the  Pere  Mar- 
quette  at  that  time — in  the  summer  of  1904. 

And  right  here  it  should  be  said  that  this 
gross  misstatement  comes  as  near  the  truth 
as  any  of  the  charges  brought  to  show  how 
Armour,  as  a  packer,  sandbags  the  rail- 
roads into  giving  his  car  lines  exclusive 
contracts  for  the  refrigeration  of  fresh 
fruits  and  vegetables. 

Now  there  is  a  sequel  to  the  Pere  Mar- 
quette  case ;  and  the  sequel  should  be  inter- 
esting to  those  whose  sympathies  have  been 
wrought  upon  by  sensational  writers  until 
they  mourn  the  fate  of  Michigan  peach- 
growers  in  the  clutches  of  ' '  Armour  and  his 
monopoly."  It  is  the  more  interesting 
because  all  orators  against  the  private-car 
lines  in  magazines  and  in  Interstate  Com- 
merce hearings  must  have  made  the  Pere 
Marquette  situation  their  pet  "horrible 
example. ' ' 

The  private-car  lines'  exclusive  contract 
for  fruit-refrigeration  service  on  the  Pere 
248 


CAR  LINES  AND  THE  PEOPLE 

Marquette  Railroad  expired  in  1905,  about 
the  time  the  road  went  into  the  hands  of  a 
receiver.  That  contract  was  renewed  within 
thirty  days  by  the  receiver  representing 
the  United  States  Court.  It  is  an  exclusive 
contract,  too. 

The  receiver  of  the  Pere  Marquette  is 
Hon.  Judson  Harmon,  of  Cincinnati,  a 
lawyer  of  national  reputation,  who  was 
Attorney-General  of  the  United  States  in 
President  Cleveland's  Cabinet.  The  court 
behind  him  is  a  United  States  Court,  supe- 
rior in  its  powers  even  to  the  Interstate 
Commerce  Commission. 

It  will  hardly  be  alleged,  I  think,  that 
Judson  Harmon,  acting  as  an  agent  of 
the  United  States  Court,  has  made  this  con- 
tract as  a  part  of  a  trade  for  a  haul  of 
11  forty  cars  of  meat  a  week."  Nor  is  this 
emphatic  endorsement  by  the  growers  and 
shippers  of  that  line  due,  as  our  enemies 
may  contend,  to  the  fact  that  the  Pere  Mar- 
quette road  is  in  the  hands  of  a  receiver. 
249 


THE   PACKERS,   THE   PRIVATE 

The  fact  is,  these  growers  and  shippers 
have  stood  by  us'loyally  from  the  first  year 
of  our  operations  in  Michigan,  and  will 
doubtless  do  so  as  long  as  we  continue,  as 
we  have  in  the  past,  to  give  them  value  re- 
ceived. 

It  seems  hardly  necessary  to  say  that 
Judge  Harmon,  as  receiver,  made  this  con- 
tract only  after  he  was  thoroughly  satisfied 
that  it  would  be  the  best  for  the  railroad 
and  best  for  the  growers  and  shippers  along 
its  line.  His  method  of  satisfying  himself 
is  especially  interesting  in  view  of  the 
widely  circulated  statements  to  the  effect 
that  the  fruit-grower  has  been  robbed  by 
the  private-car  lines  and  is  struggling  to 
escape  from  its  clutches. 

The  question  of  getting  ready  to  move 
next  summer's  fruit  crop  came  up  to  Re- 
ceiver Harmon  in  the  natural  course  of  rail- 
road administration. 

To  determine  exactly  what  ought  to  be 
done  about  it — and  perhaps  moved  some- 
250 


CAE  LINES  AND  THE  PEOPLE 

what  by  current  criticism  of  private-car 
lines  and  their  exclusive  contract  system, 
especially  as  to  the  Pere  Marquette  Bail- 
road — Judge  Harmon  ordered  a  house-to- 
house  canvass,  as  it  were,  of  the  territory 
concerned.  The  officials  of  the  road  went 
out  along  the  line,  met  the  growers  and 
shippers  at  the  respective  shipping-points, 
invited  frank  and  outspoken  expressions 
of  their  experience  with  the  refrigeration 
service  furnished  by  railroads  as  well  as 
by  private-car  lines,  and  asked  what  they 
wished  for  the  coming  season. 

The  stenographic  report  of  those  confer- 
ences shows  that  a  preference  for  the  con- 
tinuation of  the  previous  arrangement — for 
private  refrigerator-cars  operated  under 
the  exclusive  contract  that  is  alleged  to  be 
"throttling  the  fruit  industry" — has  been 
and  is  practically  unanimous  from  one  end 
of  the  railway  to  the  other.  The  report 
abounds  in  expressions  like  these : 
251 


THE   PACKERS,   THE   PRIVATE 

"The  rate  is  a  secondary  consideration; 
quality  of  service  comes  first." 

"I  prefer  the  Armour  car,  at  double  the 
price,  to  any  other  car  we  ever  had. ' ' 

"Deliver  us  from  refrigerator-cars  bor- 
rowed from  other  railroads!  We  want 
cars  that  we  know  will  come  to  us  clean  and 
in  good  condition." 

"If  the  Pere  Marquette  were  sending  in 
their  cars  free  and  furnishing  ice  and  all, 
I  would  prefer  the  Armour  cars  and  pay 
the  present  rate. ' ' 

The  difference  between  private-car  line 
refrigeration  rates  in  Michigan  in  1900, 
or  before,  and  those  subsequent  to  that 
year  has  been  the  subject  of  persistent  and 
willful  misrepresentation.  This  juggling 
of  the  truth  has  been  the  more  dishonest 
because  it  has  sought  to  justify  itself  by  em- 
phasizing a  technicality. 

The  private-car  lines'  Michigan  tariff  for 
1902  was  higher  than  for  previous  years. 
252 


CAR  LINES  AND  THE  PEOPLE 

The  reason  for  it  was  this :  Prior  to  1902 
the  Michigan  railroads  paid  for  all  the  ice 
used  for  the  initial  icing  of  all  fruit-cars 
before  being  loaded,  for  re-icing  after  being 
loaded,  and  for  re-icing  en  route  to  the  East, 
the  heaviest  part  of  the  business ;  the  ship- 
per paid  for  no  ice  except  that  used  for  re- 
icing  cars  en  route  to  the  South' and  West. 

The  car  lines'  tariff,  therefore,  entirely 
excluded  the  cost  of  the  initial  icing  and  re- 
icing  eastward;  it  covered  only  the  service 
eastward  and  only  service  and  re-icing  to 
the  South  and  West.  After  the  first  con- 
tract was  made  the  railroads  stopped  fur- 
nishing ice,  and  the  :ar  lines'  tariff  then 
had  to  be  made  high  enough  to  cover  the 
new  expense  (namely,  the  cost  of  all  ice 
both  for  initial  icing  and  re-icing)  as  well 
as  the  service  before.  This  change  in  rates 
brought  no  additional  profit  to  the  car  lines. 

Free  icing  at  the  railroad's  expense  was 
never  practiced,  so  far  as  I  know,  in  con- 
nection with  the  fruit  business  anywhere 
253 


THE   PACKERS,   THE   PRIVATE 

but  in  Michigan.  It  was  discontinued  there 
— after  the  1900  contract — for  the  simple 
reason  that  the  railroads  could  not  afford 
it.  The  traffic-manager  of  the  Pere  Mar- 
quette,  Mr.  A.  Patriarche,  in  sworn  testi- 
mony before  the  Interstate  Commerce  Com- 
mission, in  June,  1904,  made  clear  the  fact 
that  free  ice  ate  up  fifty  per  cent,  of  the 
revenue  from  fruit-shipments.  The  car 
lines'  part  in  the  change  was  explicitly 
stated  to  the  United  States  Senate's  Com- 
mittee on  Interstate  Commerce,  May  15, 
1905,  by  Mr.  George  B.  Bobbins,  president 
of  the  Armour  Car  Lines,  as  follows : 

"In  1900  we  furnished  refrigeration  to 
shippers  of  Michigan  peaches,  and  under 
the  railroad  rule  or  classification  then  in 
effect,  the  railroad  paid  us  for,  or  absorbed, 
the  cost  of  ice  both  at  loading-stations  and 
en  route,  and  our  rates  were  based  on  these 
conditions.  I  cannot  recall  a  similar  rule 
having  ever  been  in  effect  elsewhere. 
254 


CAR  LINES  AND  THE  PEOPLE 

"In  1901  or  1902  the  Michigan  roads 
changed  this  rule  and  discontinued  furnish- 
ing the  ice  free,  and  we  advanced  our 
charges  to  cover  the  additional  cost  of  ice 
to  us. 

"We  had  nothing  whatever  to  do  with 
this  change  in  rule,  and  our  profit  was  not 
increased  by  the  increased  charge  for  the 
refrigeration  over  the  previous  abnormally 
low  one.  The  matter  is  one  entirely  be- 
tween the  road  and  the  shippers  and  is  not 
chargeable  to  the  car  lines  in  any  way. '  * 

By  cunningly  exploiting  the  rate-advance, 
which  was  due  entirely  to  the  railroads'  dis- 
continuance of  free  ice,  as  has  been  shown, 
the  car  lines'  critics  seek  to  smother  this 
further  fact. 

Michigan  peach-growers  have  prospered 
under  the  good  service  furnished  by  the 
exclusive  contract  and  full  refrigeration- 
tariif  as  they  never  prospered  before ;  they 
have  said  so;  and,  as  we  have  seen  from 
255 


THE   PACKERS,   THE   PRIVATE 

Receiver  Harmon's  inquiry,  the  peach- 
growers  along  the  Pere  Marquette  heartily 
favor  a  continuance  of  the  service. 

It  is  pertinent  to  the  rate  question  to 
reiterate  this  statement:  In  practically 
every  section  where  the  Armour  cars  oper- 
ate under  exclusive  contracts,  refrigera- 
tion-rates are  lower  than  they  were  before 
such  contracts  were  made,  and  as  fast  as 
economies  can  be  effected  in  organization 
and  management,  and  as  business  increases, 
rates  are  further  reduced.  This  policy 
has  been  consistently  pursued  and.will  con- 
tinue to  be. 

This  shows  the  way  in  which,  from  start 
to  finish,  the  magazine  agitators  have  made 
their  case  by  unsupported  personal  state- 
ments— cunningly  selected  half-truths  and 
imaginings  dressed  up  to  look  like  facts, 
and  all  trimmed  to  fit  preconceived  theory. 
It  is  clearly  impossible,  for  reasons  of 
space,  to  consider  all  their  charges. 

It  is  worth  while,  however,  to  touch 
256 


CAE  LINES  AND  THE  PEOPLE 

briefly  upon  a  few  other  facts  that  have 
been  persistently — and  adroitly — garbled 
by  these  writers. 

Throughout  the  studied  efforts  to  "make 
a  case"  against  the  private-car  lines,  facts 
have  been  juggled  or  wantonly  suppressed 
to  give  these  impressions: 

That  the  only  expense  attached  to  refrig- 
eration service  is  the  cost  of  ice;  that  the 
car  lines  secure  exclusive  contracts  with 
railroads  by  some  secret,  underhand 
method,  or  by  coercing  weak  railroads,  and 
then  arbitrarily  "charge  what  they  like." 

That  the  largest,  best-equipped,  and  best- 
operated  railways  furnish  refrigeration 
service  "of  the  highest  character"  at  lower 
rates  than  the  car  lines  do. 

That  the  refrigeration-service  charge  is 
"extortion,"  as  applied  to  the  fruit  and 
vegetable  grower,  and  a  "burden"  upon 
the  "perishable  food-supply  of  the  nation." 

Let  us  deal  specifically  with  these  mis- 
representations. 

17  257 


THE   PACKERS,   THE   PRIVATE 

Private-car-line  refrigeration  service,  I 
repeat,  is  not  an  ice  business ;  it  is  a  highly 
specialised  service — a  typical  product  of 
this  specializing  age.  In  the  professions- 
law,  medicine,  engineering — the  specialist 
commands  the  highest  price  for  his  work. 
That  business  house — in  manufacturing 
or  in  merchandising — is  most  successful 
whose  department-heads  have  best  learned 
how  to  specialize. 

"Why  apply  a  different  standard  to  re- 
frigeration service?  There  was  a  time  in 
the  railroad  business  when  passengers  and 
freight  were  carried  in  the  same  train.  The 
freight-train  of  to-day  is  better,  faster,  and 
safer  than  the  mixed  passenger  and  freight 
train  of  former  days ;  the  * '  regular ' '  train 
is  still  better;  the  "limited"  is  better  yet, 
and  a  ride  on  it  costs  more. 

Specializing — nothing    but   specializing, 
in    car-building,     engine-building,     track- 
building  and  operation — has  produced  the 
Chicago-to-New  York  eighteen-hour  train. 
258 


CAR  LINES  AND   THE   PEOPLE 

There  is  as  much  difference  between  good 
refrigerator-cars  and  bad  refrigerator-cars, 
between  good  refrigeration  service  and 
poor  refrigeration  service,  as  there  is  be- 
tween the  good  and  poor  in  any  kind  of 
business.  As  in  other  lines  of  business,  too, 
a  good  refrigeration  service  costs  more 
than  poor  service — much  more — and  is 
worth  more — worth  much  more — than  the 
extra  cost. 

It  is,  therefore,  misleading,  not  to  say 
dishonest,  to  assume  that  all  refrigerator- 
cars  and  all  kinds  of  refrigeration  service 
are  alike,  to  compare  rates  on  that  basis 
and  to  call  the  higher  rate  "  extortionate " 
without  taking  into  account  the  service 
value  given  for  that  rate.  As  well  say  that 
every  suit  of  clothes  is  equally  good  and  all 
suits  ought  to  be  sold  at  the  same  price. 

Let  me  recapitulate,  briefly,  the  main 
points  of  the  service : 

Refrigeration  service  of  the  first  class — 
the  kind  private-car  lines  furnish — must  be 
259 


THE   PACKERS,    THE   PRIVATE 

thoroughly  organized  and  manned  by  spe- 
cialists, and  must  be  comprehensive  in  its 
field  of  operation,  equipped  to  give  the 
shipper  service  in  and  to  any  part  of  the 
country. 

Its  cars  must  be  specially  designed  for 
carrying  highly  perishable  berries  and 
fruit;  it  must  keep  those  cars  in  the  best 
possible  condition,  and  permit  them  to  be 
used  but  rarely  and  discreetly  for  carrying 
anything  but  fruit,  berries,  or  vegetables. 

It  must  maintain,  the  year  round,  an  ex- 
pert and  expensive  force  of  men  to  prepare 
in  detail,  and  long  in  advance,  for  the  car- 
supply,  ice-supply,  in  most  districts  brac- 
ing and  stripping  lumber,  labor,  etc.,  to 
meet  the  varying  demands  of  each  season 
in  each  district  where  it  operates. 

It  must  carry  a  still  larger  force  to  man- 
age and  supervise  loading  and  icing  sta- 
tions during  the  shipping-season,  men  who 
receive  traveling-expenses  as  well  as  sal- 
ary, and  who  are  idle  at  the  expense  of  the 
260 


CAB  LINES  AND  THE   PEOPLE 

car  lines  practically  three  months  in  the 
year. 

It  must  maintain  throughout  the  country 
icing-stations,  icing-inspectors,  and  men  to 
handle  the  ice  for  prompt  re-icing  of  cars 
and  whole  trains  in  transit. 

It  must  maintain  car-building  and  car- 
repair  shops  near  all  the  large  fruit  dis- 
tricts, and  often  gangs  of  repairers  in  the 
field,  for  hardly  a  car  makes  a  trip  without 
needing  some  repairs.  The  employees  in 
the  field  are,  in  most  cases,  practical  fruit 
men  as  well  as  refrigeration  men,  who  can 
show  the  inexperienced  grower  how  to  han- 
dle his  crop. 

And,  finally — but  by  no  means  least — the 
car  line  must  assume  the  risk.  It  must  buy 
and  store  great  quantities  of  ice  and  organ- 
ize its  force  of  employees  before  the  first 
fruit-tree  blossoms.  It  may  make  all  the 
extensive  preparations  for  a  record  crop 
that  turns  out  a  total  failure  and  converts 
preparations  into  a  dead  loss. 
261 


THE   PACKERS,    THE   PRIVATE 

On  the  other  hand,  it  may  prepare,  on  the 
best  estimates  obtainable,  for  an  average 
crop  and  be  called  upon  to  handle  a  phe- 
nomenal one ;  and  if  it  falls  short  of  enough 
cars,  ice,  or  men  to  handle  an  unexpectedly 
heavy  or  fast-ripening  crop,  it  must  stand 
the  consequences. 

At  this  writing  we  are  put  to  extreme 
measures,  because  of  the  open  winter,  to 
secure  an  ice-supply  for  next  season.  At 
one  northern  point  alone,  we  are  spending 
one  hundred  thousand  dollars  for  an  ice- 
machine  to  meet  this  emergency.  Again, 
we  are  buying  machine-ice  where  we  should 
have  natural  ice,  and  shipping  it  from  re- 
mote points.  All  this  heavy  expense 
involves  no  advance  of  refrigeration-rates. 
The  burden  falls  on  the  car  lines,  not  on  the 
growers. 

Without  the  guaranty  of  an  exclusive 

contract,  as  I  have  tried  to  make  clear,  the 

private    refrigerator-car    line    could    not 

afford  to  assume  the  risks  of  this  business ; 

262 


CAR  LINES  AND   THE  PEOPLE 

neither  could  it  afford  to  furnish  the  serv- 
ice at  the  price  it  charges.  Experience 
has  demonstrated  that  to  the  satisfaction 
of  growers,  shippers,  and  railroads.  Ex- 
perience has  demonstrated,  too,  that  the 
exclusive  contract  is  as  much  a  benefit  to 
the  car  lines'  customers  as  it  is  to  the  car 
lines.  It  is  a  guaranty  to  the  grower,  the 
shipper,  and  the  railroad  that  when  the 
fruit  crop  ripens  in  a  given  territory  there 
will  be  an  ample  supply  of  first-class  refrig- 
erator-cars to  carry  the  fruit  in,  and  an  or- 
ganized refrigeration  service  to  protect  the 
fruit  on  its  way  to  any  and  every  market. 
The  refrigerator-car  line  and  the  exclu- 
sive contract  exist  solely  because  they  have 
been  proven  to  be  an  economic  necessity  in 
the  handling  of  perishable  fruits  and  vege- 
tables. They  owe  nothing  to  favoritism 
and  none  is  practiced  by  means  of  them, 
directly  or  indirectly,  for  or  against  any 
railroad,  car  line,  grower,  shipper,  or  re- 
ceiver of  shipments. 

263 


THE   PACKERS,    THE   PRIVATE 

Some  of  the  most  important  contracts 
held  by  the  Armour  Car  Lines  are  in  that 
great  fruit  belt  extending  through  Florida, 
Georgia,  South  Carolina,  and  North  Caro- 
lina, where  the  railroads  could  not  possibly 
be  coerced  by  Armour  &  Co.'s  "  great 
power  over  the  railroads  "  as  "  a  great  ship- 
per." The  railroads  there  with  which  ex- 
clusive contracts  have  been  made  for  years 
are  competing  lines:  the  Southern,  the  Sea- 
board Air  Line  and  the  Atlantic  Coast  Line, 
the  Central  of  Georgia,  the  Western  and 
Atlantic,  and  the  Georgia  Southern  and 
Florida,  and  so  on.  How  would  you  force 
the  same  kind  of  an  exclusive  contract  from 
each  of  three  competing  lines  by  threat- 
ening to  divert  freight  from  one  to 
another  ? 

Another  point:  Armour  is  not  a  " great 
shipper"  over  any  of  the  railroads  in  that 
territory.  The  meat  and  provision  ship- 
ments that  go  over  these  roads  are  not 
heavy  through  shipments  on  a  wholesale 
264 


CAR  LINES  AND  THE  PEOPLE 

basis — for  export,  for  redistribution,  etc. — 
but  are  the  only  comparatively  small  ship- 
ments to  supply  local  consumption  in  a 
territory  whose  largest  city  has  a  popula- 
tion of  only  one  hundred  and  fifty  thou- 
sand. Shipments  of  that  character  hardly 
give  Armour  "great  power  over  the  rail- 
roads." 

Now  let  us  see  what  there  is  to  the  com- 
plaint that  the  exclusive  contract  gives  the 
private-car  line  a  "monopoly"  and  enables 
it  to  "charge  what  it  likes." 

A  refrigerator-car  line  does  acquire,  by 
an  exclusive  contract,  all  the  refrigeration 
business  arising  during  the  life  of  the  con- 
tract on  the  particular  railroad  contracted 
with,  and  acquires  it  for  the  reasons 
already  explained;  but  this  contract  no 
more  creates  a  monopoly,  in  the  accepted 
meaning  of  the  word,  than  does  the  con- 
tract under  which  one  paper-mill,  for  exam- 
ple, supplies  all  the  paper  of  certain  grades 
used  by  the  United  States  government. 
265 


THE   PACKERS,   THE   PRIVATE 

The  refrigerator-car  line's  contract,  like 
the  paper-mill's  contract,  is  simply  an 
agreement  that  certain  well-defined  serv- 
ice shall  be  performed  during  a  certain 
period  at  a  certain  price,  and  in  accordance 
with  specifically  described  conditions.  The 
contract  is  open  to  competition  before  it 
is  executed.  The  specifications  or  condi- 
tions as  to  car-supply,  ice-supply,  re-icing, 
etc.,  are  carefully  drawn  to  meet  the  re- 
quirements of  the  shippers  and  the  rail- 
roads. Maximum  rates  are  named,  it  is 
specified  that  the  rates  shall  be  reasonable, 
and  the  car  line  is  not  left  a  chance  to 
"charge  what  it  likes."  Contract  condi- 
tions having  been  thus  prescribed,  the  rail- 
road naturally  lets  the  refrigeration  con- 
tract to  the  car  line  that  is  best  able  to  carry 
out  the  contract  conditions.  Right  here  I 
may  explain  that  in  many  cases,  and  when- 
ever conditions  warrant  it,  the  rates 
charged  are  less  than  the  maximum  rates 
named  in  the  contract.  If  rates  should  be 
266 


CAR  LINES  AND   THE   PEOPLE 

made  too  high — so  high  as  to  be  burden- 
some— the  railroad,  which  ought  to  be  self- 
ishly interested  in  encouraging  its  ship- 
pers, has  the  remedy  in  its  own  hands.  It 
can  annul  the  contract  for  cause. 

The  greater  the  quantity  of  fruit  grown, 
the  greater  the  volume  of  business  for  re- 
frigerator-cars. No  car  line  could  afford  to 
make  oppressive  rates  that  would  discour- 
age and  diminish  fruit-growing.  And  if  the 
car  line  were  so  foolish  as  to  do  that,  could 
the  railroad  afford  to  let  it  be  done  and  so 
rob  itself  of  freight-revenue  from  fruit- 
shipments  ? 

In  view  of  the  facts  I  have  stated  as  to 
how  car  lines'  exclusive  contracts  are 
made,  the  logic  of  your  own  business  expe- 
rience ought  to  make  it  plain  that  a  car  line 
cannot  "charge  what  it  likes,"  and,  if  it 
could,  would  not  desire  to  charge  unreason- 
able rates. 

Now  for  a  few  facts  on  the  broad  state- 
ments and  broader  insinuations  to  the  effect 
267 


THE   PACKERS,    THE   PRIVATE 

that  certain  strong  railroads — too  strong 
to  be  influenced  by  the  power  of  "a  great 
shipper" — furnish  better  refrigeration  at 
lower  rates  than  private-car  lines  do. 

Certain  railroads  do  operate  their  own 
refrigerator-cars,  but  chiefly  in  the  dairy 
products  and  produce  business.  The  pri- 
vate-car lines  which  are  under  fire  do  berry 
and  fruit  refrigeration  chiefly,  which  is  en- 
tirely different  from  the  refrigeration  re- 
quired for  dairy  products  and  produce. 
Consequently,  comparison  of  the  two,  as  to 
rates  or  otherwise,  is  unfair. 

Only  a  very  few  railroads  furnish  refrig- 
eration on  a  large  scale,  or  pretend  to  fur- 
nish inspection  and  re-icing  after  shipments 
leave  their  own  lines.  Most  of  the  few 
roads  which  do  this,  as  the  Santa  Fe  and 
the  Gould  Lines,  maintain  a  separate  re- 
frigeration service  organization  like  that  of 
the  private-car  lines  and  charge  relatively 
the  same  rates  that  private-car  lines  do. 
The  railroads  which  make  a  lower  refrig- 
268 


CAR  LINES  AND  THE  PEOPLE 

eration-rate  do  this  business  at  a  loss.  I 
believe  they  would  so  state  if  asked. 

The  Pennsylvania  Eailroad  and  the 
Gould  Lines  have  been  mentioned  as  having 
refused  to  make  exclusive  contracts  with 
private-car  lines,  the  insinuation  being  that 
they  were  strong  enough  to  defy  "the  octo- 
pus. ' ' 

The  private-car  lines  have  no  formal  con- 
tract with  the  Pennsylvania  Eailroad,  but 
one  of  them  for  years  has  handled  most  of 
the  berries  and  fruit  refrigeration  on  that 
road,  especially  in  Delaware,  where  the 
most  of  the  Pennsylvania  Railroad's  fruit 
and  berry  traffic  originates. 

And  that  same  private-car  line  has  been 
asked  by  the  railroad  to  take  care  of  the 
berry  and  fruit  refrigeration  on  the  Penn- 
sylvania for  the  season  of  1906.  Nearly  all 
of  the  Pennsylvania's  own  refrigerator 
cars  are  used  for  dairy  products  and  pro- 
duce. 

The  Gould  Lines,  as  railroads,  do  not  own 
269 


THE   PACKERS,   THE   PRIVATE 

any  refrigerator  cars;  they  do  own  the 
American  Refrigerator  Transit  Company, 
which  is  a  separate  corporation  and  is  oper- 
ated just  as  the  Armour  and  other  private- 
car  lines  are.  Most  of  these  American 
Refrigerator  Transit  cars  are  also  used  for 
dairy  products  and  produce. 

One  Gould  Line,  the  Denver  and  Rio 
Grande,  had  an  exclusive  contract  with  a 
private-car  line  which  expired  in  1904  or 
in  1905;  the  American  Refrigerator  Tran- 
sit cars  then  replaced  Armour  cars  on  the 
Denver  and  Rio  Grande  for  handling  Colo- 
rado's large  and  growing  fruit  business. 
A  short  time  ago  the  old  exclusive  con- 
tract between  the  Armour  Car  Lines  and 
the  Denver  and  Rio  Grande,  a  Gould  line, 
was  renewed  at  the  request  of  that  railroad 
and  of  the  growers  and  shippers  along  its 
lines.  So  in  1906  private-car-line  refrig- 
erator-cars will  replace  Gould  cars  on  a 
Gould  railroad. 

These  facts  ought  to  satisfy  the  most  cap- 
270 


CAR  LINES  AND  THE  PEOPLE 

tious  that  there  is  no  honesty  in  the  state- 
ment or  insinuation  that  railroads  furnish 
better  refrigeration  than  private-car  lines 
do,  or  furnish  as  good  service  at  lower 
rates,  or  that  they  are  forced  to  take  our 
service.  The  testimony  of  railroad  officials 
who  have  had  to  give  special  attention  to 
refrigeration  is  practically  all  to  the  con- 
trary. 

The  railroads  on  which  the  great  bulk  of 
highly  perishable  fruit  business  originates 
— the  Southern  Pacific,  Pere  Marquette,  the 
Atlantic  Coast  Line,  the  Central  of  Georgia, 
and  other  southeastern  lines — long  since 
adopted  the  private-car  line  service  and 
facilities  under  exclusive  contracts,  to  the 
better  satisfaction  of  the  growers. 

The  consumer,  too,  has  a  vital  interest  in 
this  private-car  line  question.  Every  city 
housewife  of  moderate  means  knows  that 
the  season  during  which  she  can  have  fresh 
fruits  and  vegetables  on  her  table  is  months 
271 


THE   PACKERS,   THE   PRIVATE 

longer  now  than  it  used  to  be  six  to  ten 
years  ago. 

Then  only  the  very  rich  could  disregard 
the  season  by  disregarding  expense  in  sup- 
plying the  table;  but  families  of  small  or 
moderate  incomes  had  to  get  their  "fresh" 
fruit,  berries,  and  vegetables  out  of  cans 
for  a  large  part  of  the  year. 

That  condition  was  not  changed  until 
the  refrigerator-car  service,  developed  and 
made  efficient  by  the  specializing  of  the  pri- 
vate-car lines,  opened  the  way  for  growers 
in  all  parts  of  the  country  to  grow  and 
market  early  fruits  and  vegetables  at  a 
profit. 

The  truth  of  this  will  appeal  to  any  city 
resident,  whether  a  member  of  a  family  or 
a  patron  of  a  boarding-house,  hotel,  or  res- 
taurant. The  moderately-circumstanced  in 
all  cities  had  no  fresh  fruits  and  vegeta- 
bles until  crops  ripened  at  near-by  points. 

In  Chicago,  they  waited  for  strawberries 
until  they  came  from  Indiana  and  southern 
272 


CAB  LINES  AND   THE  PEOPLE 

Illinois,  and  did  not  revel  in  them  until  the 
Michigan  crop  ripened;  New  York's  eco- 
nomical housewives  waited  for  Delaware's 
crop. 

The  "popular  price"  restaurant  or  hotel 
did  not  pretend  to  carry  lettuce,  fresh 
tomatoes,  and  such  tender  vegetables  in  the 
midwinter  menu ;  if  they  appeared  at  all  in 
the  winter,  they  appeared  only  as  occa- 
sional novelties — a  stroke  of  enterprise  by 
the  proprietor — at  a  fancy  price. 

Patrons  of  all  such  restaurants  and 
hotels  in  the  large  cities  now  have  lettuce, 
fresh  tomatoes,  etc.,  on  the  daily  bill  of  fare 
practically  the  year  round  and  at  reason- 
able prices. 

Take  the  cantaloupe,  for  example;  until 
within  a  decade  it  could  be  had  for  only 
a  very  short  period  and  only  at  a  high  price. 
To  find  one  on  the  market  as  early  as  the 
Fourth  of  July  was  a  novelty.  Now  Florida 
cantaloupes  come  into  the  market  in  the  lat- 
ter part  of  May  and  the  development  of 
18  273 


THE   PACKERS,   THE   PRIVATE 

cantaloupe-growing  in  favorable  sections, 
from  Delaware  to  Colorado  and  California, 
keeps  them  coming  to  market  all  summer 
at  prices  that  make  them  an  every-day  deli- 
cacy in  families  which  used  to  deem  them  a 
luxury  produced  only  for  the  very  rich. 

In  1897  it  was  estimated  that  not  more 
than  four  hundred  cars  of  cantaloupes  were 
grown  in  the  whole  country.  The  crop  of 
1905,  after  only  eight  years  of  development, 
was  figured  at  nearly  seven  thousand  car- 
loads. A  section  of  the  Salton  Desert,  Cali- 
fornia, where  the  private-car  lines  have 
ice-houses  below  the  sea-level,  and  where 
the  temperature  often  rises  to  one  hundred 
and  twenty-five  degrees,  had  sixty-four 
acres  of  cantaloupes  four  years  ago;  this 
season  it  will  have  two  thousand,  five  hun- 
dred acres  of  cantaloupes. 

The  practical,  frugal  housewife  of  to-day 

does  only  a  fraction  of  the  "putting-up" 

and  preserving  that  she  did  ten  years  ago. 

Why  go  to  that  trouble?    She  can  supply 

274 


CAR  LINES  AND  THE   PEOPLE 

her  table  better  and  for  the  same,  or  less, 
sum  of  money  because  she  gets  fresh  fruits 
and  vegetables  practically  all  the  year.  I 
am  not  saying  that  cost  of  living  has  been 
reduced  by  this  fruit  and  vegetable  devel- 
opment due  to  refrigeration  service;  but 
I  do  say  that  thousands  and  millions  of  per- 
sons are  able,  by  reason  of  that  develop- 
ment, to  live  better  for  the  same  money. 


275 


THE   PACKERS,   THE   PRIVATE 


CHAPTER  XII 

THEORY  VS.  CONDITION". 

NOW  for  a  word  of  explanation  and 
emphasis  as  to  private  ownership  of 
meat  refrigerator-cars.  There  is,  it 
seems  to  me,  every  reason  why  the  packers 
should  own  the  refrigerator-cars  in  which 
their  meats  are  shipped  and  no  reason  why 
they  should  not.  This  may  appear  to  the 
layman  to  be  a  very  broad  statement,  but  I 
believe  that  a  knowledge  of  the  facts  in- 
volved will  bring  any  fair-minded  business 
man  to  this  view  of  the  case. 

The  general  public  supposes  that,  because 
railroads  are  in  the  business  of  carrying 
freight,  all  an  intending  shipper  has  to  do 
is  to  ask  for  a  freight-car  and  it  will  be 
eagerly  and  promptly  brought  to  the  ship- 
ping-point ready  to  receive  its  cargo.  But 
men  who  have  had  experience  as  shippers 
276 


CAR  LINES  AND  THE   PEOPLE 

know  that  this  is  merely  a  theory,  not  an 
actual  condition.  The  facts  are  that  the 
railroad  is  constantly  trying  to  get  along 
with  as  few  freight-cars  as  possible  and  still 
handle  its  traffic;  its  effort  is  to  handle  a 
maximum  volume  of  freight  with  a  mini- 
mum equipment  of  cars. 

Now  what  is  the  inevitable  result  of  this 
kind  of  thing  I  A  constant  shortage  of  cars 
which  becomes  especially  acute  at  seasons 
of  general  freight  movement.  Any  regular 
shipper  in  any  line  of  business  using  freight- 
cars  furnished  by  the  railroad  will  tell  you 
that  one  of  the  most  serious  avenues 
through  which  his  business  is  made  to  suf- 
fer is  that  of  failure  of  the  railroad  to  fur- 
nish him  cars  when  they  are  needed.  He 
will  tell  you  that  this  is  not  an  exceptional 
emergency  but  a  chronic  and  discouraging 
problem. 

If  the  writers  who  devote  their  talent  to 
attacking  the  packers  are  to  be  believed,  the 
railroads  are  so  eager  to  please  these  "fav- 
277 


ored  shippers ' '  that  they  would  go  to  almost 
any  length  rather  than  incur  the  displeasure 
of  these  "freight  barons."  But  how  does 
the  car  supply  problem  work  out  in  actual 
practice  as  between  the  railroads  and  the 
packers  f 

Eight  weeks  ago  from  this  writing  the 
Armour  Fertilizer  Works  made  a  requisi- 
tion for  forty  freight-cars  to  haul  one  thou- 
sand tons  of  fertilizer  material  from  a  cer- 
tain point  in  Tennessee.  Of  those  forty 
cars  just  three  were  actually  furnished  in 
a  period  of  eight  weeks,  and  a  large  plant 
dependent  on  the  material  was  shut  down! 

This  is  not  an  exceptional  occurrence.  On 
the  contrary,  it  is  a  routine  circumstance. 
Eight  at  the  same  time  three  ocean 
schooners  chartered  by  Armour  &  Co. 
for  phosphate  rock  loading  were  tied 
up  at  the  Tampa  docks  waiting  for  rock 
which  could  not  be  shipped  from  the  mines 
owing  to  the  railway 's  inability  to  furnish 
cars.  This  delay  in  getting  freight-cars 
278 


CAB  LINES  AND  THE  PEOPLE 
caused  a  demurrage  charge  of  $340.00  a 

day. 

How  does  all  this  apply  to  the  problem  of 
the  private  ownership  of  meat  refrigerator- 
cars?  Most  directly  and  pertinently !  There 
are  some  kinds  of  shipping  where  a  delay  is 
not  a  serious  matter,  although  it  is  always 
annoying  and  expensive  to  the  shipper. 

On  the  other  hand,  there  are  businesses 
where  delay  in  shipping  is  simply  fatal, 
where  any  element  that  interferes  with  reg- 
ular and  practically  instantaneous  shipping 
must  be  eliminated  from  the  situation  at 
almost  any  cost,  for  the  business  cannot  con- 
tinue under  that  kind  of  handicap.     Com- 
mon sense  will  at  once  indicate  to   any 
reader  that  the  packing  business  belongs  to 
this  class.    Not  only  this,  but  it  is  probably 
the  most  sensitive  to  this  element  of  all 

industries. 

Fresh  meats  must  be  shipped  regularly 
and   promptly.     The  world   demands  its 
meats  every  day  and  to  place  its  supply  at 
279 


THE   PACKERS,   THE   PRIVATE 

the  mercy  of  an  unreliable  supply  of  cars  in 
which  to  ship  it  would  at  once  subject  the 
consumers  as  well  as  the  packers  of  meats 
to  a  peril  not  to  be  countenanced.  To  delay 
the  shipment  of  meats,  when  ready  to  ship, 
means  deterioration  and  loss.  Not  only 
must  there  be  a  reliable  source  of  supply, 
but  the  cars  must  be  clean  and  in  the  best  of 
repair.  Fruit  or  dairy-cars  will  not  do. 
They  are  not  safe.  Meat  must  be  shipped 
with  every  safeguard — the  public  health  de- 
mands it.  Railroad  administration  is  not 
efficient  enough  to  guarantee  this. 

The  only  way  in  which  the  packers  can 
possibly  protect  the  public  and  themselves 
from  the  hardships  incident  upon  delayed 
shipments  is  to  have  their  own  refrigerator- 
cars  which  are  absolutely  subject  to  their 
own  control  and  which  cannot  be  diverted  to 
other  uses.  They  must  know  that  they  are 
to  have  at  their  beck  and  call,  every  day  in 
the  year,  enough  cars  to  handle  their  busi- 
280 


CAB  LINES  AND  THE   PEOPLE 

ness  and  to  handle  it  without  delay  or  with- 
out danger  of  delay. 

If  I  have  not  already  given  sufficient  sup- 
port to  my  statement  that  the  railroads  are 
not  to  be  depended  upon  for  a  prompt  sup- 
ply of  freight-cars,  it  is  for  no  lack  of  defi- 
nite cases  in  point. 

In  the  year  1904  a  large  southern  fer- 
tilizer maker  manufactured,  sold,  and  held 
in  hand  shipping  instructions  for  the  move- 
ment of  5,000  car-loads  of  fertilizer  which 
could  not  be  shipped  because  the  railroads 
failed  to  furnish  the  necessary  cars  in  time 
to  get  the  fertilizer  on  the  ground  when  the 
land  was  being  prepared  for  the  cotton 
crop.    There  were  100,000  tons  of  this  fer- 
tilizer  which,    in    the    natural    course    of 
events,  would  have  produced  about  134,000 
bales  of  cotton,  worth  more  than  $8,000,000, 
not  to  speak  of  $1,600,000  worth  of  cotton- 
seed oil  and  meal.    Kather  a  heavy  forfeit 
for  the  failure  of  the  railroads  to  furnish 
sufficient  freight-cars ! 
281 


THE   PACKERS,   THE   PRIVATE 

However,  I  am  certain  that  my  conten- 
tion will  not  be  questioned  by  any  shipper 
who  has  occasion,  at  all  seasons,  to  make 
requisition  upon  any  railroad  for  any  con- 
siderable number  of  freight-cars.  No  mat- 
ter to  how  high  a  figure  his  annual  freight 
shipments  may  climb,  he  will  be  found 
among  those  who  suffer  from  the  undepend- 
able  supply  of  freight-cars — and  because 
this  difficulty  is  inherent  in  the  system  of 
railroad  operation  as  it  is  now  practiced 
and  as  it  must  be  practiced  for  many  years 
to  come.  Some  of  the  highest  salaries  in  the 
railroad  world  are  paid  to  men  who  best 
approximate  the  solution  of  this  difficulty 
at  a  minimum  of  expense.  They  are  able 
executive  men  and  accomplish  wonders  un- 
der the  adverse  conditions  imposed  upon 
them,  but  these  conditions  are  such  that  no 
amount  of  executive  genius  can  make  the 
supply  of  freight-cars  from  a  railroad  any- 
thing but  erratic  and  undependable.  So 
impossible  is  it  for  railroad  traffic  men  to 
282 


CAB  LINES  AND  THE  PEOPLE 

cope  with  these  conditions  that  we  invari- 
ably make  it  a  rule  to  anticipate  our  ship- 
ments of  fertilizer  and  other  common 
freight  by  notifying  the  railroads  thirty  to 
sixty  days  in  advance  of  our  requirements ; 
but  notwithstanding  our  precautions,  we 
are  invariably  confronted  with  car  short- 
ages, ranging  from  ten  to  thirty-five  cars 
per  day  at  different  plants. 


283 


CHAPTER  XIII 

AS  TO  EXPORT  BUSINESS 

AVEEY  important  side  of  the  packing 
industry,  and  one  that  is  often  over- 
looked by  the  layman,  is  the  export 
business.     Without  a  comprehensive  view 
of  the  origin,  extent,  and  consequences  of 
our  foreign  trade  in  meats,  meat  products, 
and  meat  animals,  it  is  impossible  to  arrive 
at  a  clear  understanding  of  the  mutual  rela- 
tions between  packers,  live  stock  raisers, 
and  the  general  public. 

The  export  business  in  meats  and  meat 
animals  has  been  a  great  factor  in  opening 
the  way  for  that  development  of  the  live 
stock  industry  which  has  completely  revolu- 
tionized the  character  of  stock  raising  and 
farming  throughout  the  West;  it  has  re- 
acted beneficially  upon  the  agricultural  in- 
terests of  the  entire  country ;  it  has  played 
284 


CAR  LINES  AND  THE  PEOPLE 

a  part,  too,  in  giving  the  American  people, 
as  a  whole,  better  meats  at  lower  prices 
than  are  enjoyed  by  any  other  people  on 

earth. 

It  is  the  export  business  that  absorbs  the 
surplus  live  stock  grown  by  American  cat- 
tlemen  and   farmers,    and   absorbs   those 
grades  of  both  cattle  and  meats  for  which 
there  is  but  a  limited  demand  at  home.    The 
effect  of  this  is  twofold.  It  steadies  and  sup- 
ports the  home  market  for  live  stock,  and  it 
moderates  the  prices  of  those  meats  which 
the  American  consumer  demands ;  because, 
without  a  foreign  market  for  those  parts  of 
the  beef  carcass  which  the  American  does 
not    take,  the  slaughterer  would  be  com- 
pelled to  ask  a  higher  price  for  the  choice 
cuts  in  order  to  make  up  for  loss  on  the 
other  parts.    If  this  export  business  were 
taken  away,  or  even  reduced,  the  effect  of 
it   would   be    directly   felt,   not    only   by 
the    large    ranchers    and    stock    raisers, 
but  by  every  farmer  who  raises  a  steer, 
285 


THE   PACKERS,    THE    PRIVATE 

sheep,  or  hog  for  market,  and  by  every  one 
of  the  hundreds  of  thousands  who  partici- 
pate by  their  labor  in  the  immense  live  stock 
and  meat  industry. 

To  appreciate  the  national  importance  of 
this  export  business  in  meats,  meat  products 
and  meat  animals  in  dollars,  we  must  com- 
pare it  with  other  branches  of  our  export 
trade.  The  total  exports  of  the  United 
States  last  year  (1905) — embracing  every 
kind  of  domestic  product  sold  abroad,  the 
products  of  agriculture,  manufactures,  min- 
ing, forests,  fisheries  and  the  many  smaller 
miscellaneous  products — reached  the  splen- 
did total  of  $1,599,420,539.  Of  this  enor- 
mous total,  the  meat  and  live  stock  industry 
alone  furnished  about  fifteen  per  cent.,  or 
more  than  one-seventh. 

We  are  accustomed  to  boast  that  "Amer- 
ica feeds  the  world."  The  phrase  suggests, 
to  most  people,  I  believe,  our  corn  fields  and 
wheat  fields  and  milling  centres.  They  are 
all  great — tremendous — and  we  export  an 
286 


CAR  LINES  AND  THE  PEOPLE 

enormous    quantity    of    breadstuff s;    but 
measured  in  dollars  and  cents,  breadstuff 
exports  rank  away  below  meat   exports. 
Where  we  sell  abroad  $43,000,000  worth  of 
meat   animals   and   over   $190,000,000    of 
meats  and  meat  products,  we  sell  only  $154,- 
000,000  worth  of  breadstuffs.   We  are  great 
copper  producers,  yet  we  export  of  copper 
and  manufactures  of  copper  only  $85,000,- 
000  a  year.    We  have  the  richest  iron  mines 
of  the  world  and  the  greatest  iron  and  steel 
mills,  but  our  exports  of  iron  and  steel  and 
the  manufactures  thereof  fall  more  than 
$90,000,000  short  of  our  meat  exports— 
$143,000,000  of  iron  and  steel  as  against 
nearly  $234,000,000  of  live  stock  and  meats. 
The  export  of  meat  animals,  aggregating 
$42,974,945,  was  divided  as  follows : 

KIND.                          HEAD.  VALUE. 

Cattle    571,153  $41,007,375 

Hogs   82,849  811,918 

Sheep  191,030  1,155,642 

$42,974,935 

287 


THE   PACKERS,    THE   PRIVATE 

The  exports  of  meats  and  meat  products 
used  as  food — including,  of  course,  butter, 
cheese  and  milk,  for  which  a  market  has 
been  made  in  connection  with  meats — ag- 
gregate $190,660,703,  divided  as  follows: 

POUNDS.  DOLLARS. 

Fresh  beef   254,360,198  $23,246,792 

Canned  beef 75,208,036  7,423,071 

Beef,  salted,  pickled,  etc.    . . .   73,984,544  4,268,773 

Tallow    81,702,816  3,893,986 

Bacon 297,815,453  28,236,990 

Hams   207,244,526  21,358,567 

Pork,      fresh,      salt,      pickled, 

canned,  etc 161,716,505  13,287,057 

Lard  701,679,162  54,881,748 

Lard    compounds    and    substi- 
tutes     66,955,736  3,951,712 

Mutton 577,636  52,238 

Oleo  oil  and  oleomargarine  ..  192,262,668  15,503,967 

Sausage  and  sausage  meats  . .     6,964,139  756,857 

Sausage  casings  2,631,193 

Poultry  and  game    791,930 

All  other  canned  meats 1,817,786 

All  other  meats  2,791,962 

Butter    16,194,483  2,876,628 

Cheese    8,229,756  935,934 

Milk    1,953,512 

288 


CAR  LINES  AND  THE   PEOPLE 

Total  meats  and  provisions  . .  $190,660,703 

Total  meat  animals  .  42,974,935 


Grand  total  of  meat  animals 

and  animal  food  products  $233,635,638 

American  packers  have  done  practically 
all  of  the  work  that  has  gone  into  making 
the  foreign  market  for  this  immense  total. 
They  have  had  to  do  the  pioneering,  the 
promoting,  the  fostering  and  the  hard  in- 
dustrial fighting.  It  has  been  uphill  fight- 
ing, too,  in  the  fact  of  prejudice,  jealousy, 
self  interest,  and  hostile  legislation  both  at 
home  and  abroad.  Business  interests  and 
the  political  interests  that  cater  to  them 
have  been  banded  together  in  more  than 
one  foreign  country  to  put  up  the  bars 
against  American  meats.  Similar  opposi- 
tion, with  less  reason  for  its  existence,  has 
been  encountered  at  home.  But  the  Amer- 
ican packers  have  gone  on  steadily  winning 
the  way  for  American  products  in  the  face 
of  prejudice  and  unreasonable  trade  restric- 
tions. They  were  actuated  by  self  interest, 
19  289 


THE   PACKERS,    THE   PRIVATE 

of  course ;  but  that  does  not  detract  from  the 
value  of  the  thing  accomplished.  Intelli- 
gent self  interest  directed  along  industrial 
and  commercial  channels — the  impulse  to 
get  on  in  the  world — have  made  this  coun- 
try what  it  is. 

The  period  of  unwarranted  and  unintel- 
ligent criticism  of  the  packers  through 
which  we  are  now  passing  directly  affects 
this  very  large  export  element  in  our 
national  prosperity.  Every  time  an  Amer- 
ican sensation-monger,  political  agitator  or 
writer  for  the  "yellow"  periodicals  seeks 
to  attract  an  audience  by  attacking  the 
packers,  he  aims  a  blow  at  the  entire  live 
stock  and  meat  producing  industry  of  the 
United  States — at  every  cattleman,  hog 
raiser  and  sheep  grower,  and  every  person 
engaged  in  the  meat  producing  and  meat 
distributing  business.  Every  such  utter- 
ance gives  the  foreigner  just  that  much 
more  ammunition  with  which  to  fight  off 
American  exports.  Senseless  and  utterly 
290 


CAB  LINES  AND  THE  PEOPLE 

false  statements  as  to  the  cleanliness  and 
wholesomeness  of  American  meats  has 
had  a  direct  influence,  ns  I  shall  show  in 
more  detail  later,  upon  increasing  the  re- 
strictions imposed  upon  importation  of 
American  meats  into  foreign  countries.  But 
first  let  us  examine  the  relation  of  the  ex- 
port business  to  home,  industry. 

To  get  a  clear  idea  of  how  this  immense 
export  business  has  come  into  existence 
and  of  what  it  means  to  the  entire  agricul- 
tural and  live  stock  raising  population,  it  is 
necessary  to  go  back  some  distance  in  the 
history  of  our  country  and  note  the  various 
changes  in  the  growth  of  the  cattle  and  live 
stock  industry. 

Previous  to  the  development  of  the  pack- 
ing business  in  Chicago  there  was  nothing 
but  a  local  market  for  beef  cattle  in  any  part 
of  this  country.  The  influence  of  the  pack- 
ing business  in  broadening  the  market  until 
now  it  embraces  the  whole  world  has  been 
clearly  set  forth  in  a  recent  work  under- 
291 


THE   PACKERS,   THE  PRIVATE 

taken  by  authority,  and  under  the  auspices, 
of  the  National  Live  Stock  Association. 
This  history  of  the  live  stock  industry  treats 
particularly  of  the  development  of  cattle 
raising  in  the  West,  taking  Texas  as  the 
starting  point,  because  Texas  was  the  place 
where  cattle  raising  on  a  large  scale,  as  we 
know  it  to-day,  had  its  birth. 

Texas  became  known  as  the  great  cattle 
state  in  the  '50s.  In  their  efforts  to  find 
more  than  a  local  market,  Texans  under- 
took the  experiment  of  driving  cattle  all  the 
way  to  the  new  California  gold  fields,  where 
the  food  supply  was  short.  They  also 
shipped  beef  steers  by  steamship  to  New 
Orleans  and  to  Mobile,  which  were  then  de- 
veloping something  of  a  live  stock  market. 
In  the  later  '50s  they  began  reaching  out  for 
northern  markets,  driving  their  herds  into 
Missouri,  sometimes  as  far  as  St.  Louis,  and 
once  as  far  as  Quincy,  Illinois.  Ten  and  fif- 
teen dollars  the  head  was  considered  an  ex- 
292 


CAE  LINES  AND  THE   PEOPLE 

cellent  price  in  those  days  for  choice  se- 
lected beef  steers. 

The  panic  of  1857  gave  a  severe  setback 
to  the  cattle  business  of  that  time,  and  the 
war,  which  came  on  before  the  country  had 
recovered  from  the  panic,  continued  to  keep 
down  this  industry  in  the  south  and  south- 
west. It  commenced  to  revive  immediately 
after  the  war;  apparently  stimulated,  as 
nearly  as  the  records  of  those  days  indicate, 
by  the  period  of  railroad  building  which  set 
in  soon  after  the  war  was  over. 

It  is  interesting,  in  view  of  what  has  been 
said  in  recent  days  about  cattle  prices,  to 
compare  the  prices  of  now  with  the  prices 
realized  then,  when  returning  prosperity 
was  giving  cattle  raising  one  of  its  first 
booms.  A  writer  of  the  period  tells  how  a 
friend  went  to  a  herd  of  3,500  beeves  and 
bought  600,  taking  his  pick  of  the  lot  at 
$6.00  the  head.  Then  he  took  his  choice  of 
600  out  of  what  remained  at  $3.00  the  head. 
The  average  price  paid  for  1,200  picked 
293 


THE   PACKERS,   THE  PRIVATE 

beeves,  selected  from  3,500,  was  $4.50  the 
head.  But  Texas  was  still  raising  too  many 
cattle  for  the  limited  market  of  that  time. 
The  ease  with  which  cattle  could  be  pas- 
tured all  the  year  round  on  the  open  ranges 
in  a  section  that  had  little  or  no  snow  en- 
couraged such  a  multiplication  of  herds 
that  there  was  practically  no  profit  in  the 
business.  Some  of  the  Texas  ranchers,  even 
that  early,  adopted  the  method  of  driving 
their  herds  north  until  they  reached  a  rail- 
road and  then  shipping  to  Chicago.  But 
Chicago  was  only  a  local  market  at  its  best 
and  could  not  take  care  of  much  more  than 
the  natural  inflow  of  cattle  from  the  sur- 
rounding territory  in  Illinois  and  other 
nearby  states. 

The  cattleman  of  the  southwest,  on 
reaching  Chicago  in  the  early  '60s,  had  to 
sell  at  prices  that  were  little  if  any  better 
than  he  could  have  got  hundreds  of  miles 
nearer  home;  or  he  could  make  arrange- 
ment with  the  Chicago  slaughter  houses  to 
294 


CAR  LINES  AND  THE  PEOPLE 

kill  and  pack  his  stock  on  his  own  account. 
Packing  at  that  time  meant  converting  cat- 
tle into  salt  or  barreled  beef.  The  by-prod- 
ucts all  went  to  the  slaughter  house.  This 
method  of  disposing  of  his  cattle  was 
usually  the  least  satisfactory  of  all  to  the 
southwestern  cattleman. 

The  next  step  was  the  opening  of  the  cat- 
tle shipping  market  at  Abilene,  Kansas. 
The  old  Kansas  Pacific  Railroad,  now  a 
part  of  the  Union  Pacific,  extended  its  line 
late  in  1867  to  Abilene  and  that  place  im- 
mediately became  an  important  shipping 
point.  In  the  fall  of  1867,  immediately  after 
the  Abilene  market  was  opened,  35,000  head 
of  cattle  were  disposed  of  there,  which  was 
a  large  number  for  that  time. 

But  the  cattleman  was  not  yet  out  of  the 
woods.  There  was  a  prejudice  against  beef 
from  the  ranges,  which  was  all  classified  as 
Texas  beef.  Early  adventurers  into  the 
business  of  shipping  cattle  East  from  Abi- 
lene found  this  out  to  their  sorrow.  It  is 
295 


THE   PACKEES,    THE    PRIVATE 

related  that  the  second  shipment  that  ever 
left  Abilene  consisted  of  some  1,900  head  of 
beef  cattle  which  had  been  bought  at  about 
$20.00  per  head  and  shipped  to  Chicago. 
There  was  no  market  at  Chicago,  so  the 
owner  took  his  cattle  on  to  Albany,  which 
was  then  an  important  eastern  market. 
There  he  sold  his  herd  for  $300.00  less  than 
he  had  paid  in  freight.  The  venture  stood 
him  a  dead  loss  of  the  $17,500.00  he  had 
paid  for  the  lot  and  $300.00  more  paid  for 
freight  than  he  received, — a  total  of  $17,- 
800.00  on  the  loss  side  of  his  ledger,  to  say 
nothing  of  his  time  and  his  own  expenses. 

By  1870  the  demand  had  picked  up  a 
little  and  that  year  it  is  related  there  was  a 
good  market  at  Abilene,  good  beeves  sell- 
ing for  around  $20.00  a  head.  The  market 
was  helped  somewhat,  probably,  by  a  rate 
war  between  the  railroads,  during  which 
freight  on  live  cattle  went  down  to  $1.00  a 
head  from  western  points  to  Chicago  and 
nothing  from  Chicago  to  New  York.  But 
296 


CAR  LINES  AND  THE  PEOPLE 

there  was  a  reaction  in  1871  and  higher 
freight  to  pay,  with  cattle  still  coming  in 
from  the  southwest  in  response  to  the  stim- 
ulation of  the  year  before.  Out  of  the  ex- 
periences of  that  year  came  the  practice  of 
sending  cattle  from  the  south  and  south- 
west to  the  northern  ranges  to  be  finished 
and  rounded  out  for  the  market. 

When  the  Jay  Cooke  failure  and  the 
panic  of  1873  came  along,  the  bottom 
dropped  out  of  the  cattle  market.  The 
two  following  years,  1874  and  1875, 
were  also  very  dull.  Conditions  were  re- 
flected in  the  records  that  have  come  down 
to  us  of  the  greatly  reduced  number  driven 
north  from  Texas  for  further  feeding. 
From  more  than  400,000  head  sent  north  in 
1873  the  number  dropped  to  155,000  in  1874 
and  to  150,000  in  1875.  These  were  entirely 
beef  cattle  practically  ready  for  the  market 
and  good  stock  for  further  feeding. 

From  this  point  we  are  able  to  trace 
definitely  the  influence  of  the  packers  and 
297 


their  methods  of  doing  business  upon  the 
live  stock  industry  and  the  broadening  of 
the  market  for  the  product  of  American 
farms  and  ranges  until  these  markets  now 
embrace  the  entire  world.  The  early  '70s 
were  the  period  of  experimentation  by  the 
packers  with  refrigeration  in  the  handling 
and  packing  of  meats  all  the  year  round, 
and  with  the  refrigerator-car  as  a  means 
of  transporting  fresh  beef  to  far  distant 
markets. 

The  packers  had  developed  the  refrigera- 
tor-car experiment  to  the  point  where  they 
knew  they  had  something  that  must  be  used 
if  they  were  to  extend  their  business  beyond 
a  merely  local  field.  They  appealed  to  the 
railroads,  as  I  have  indicated  elsewhere, 
and  the  railroads  refused  to  undertake  the 
expense,  fearing  that  their  cars  would  lie 
idle  at  times  if  they  were  required  to  fur- 
nish cars  specially  adapted  to  the  transpor- 
tation of  fresh  meats  under  refrigeration. 

The  packers  then  undertook  to  build  their 
298 


CAR  LINES  AND  THE  PEOPLE 

own  cars,  because  they  could  not  afford  to 
have  this  form  of  transportation  furnished 
in   any   haphazard    or   half-hearted   way. 
They  foresaw  not  only  that  they  must  have 
a  certain  car  supply  for  their  own  protec- 
tion, but  that  the   public  would  be  best 
served  and  would  give  them  assurance  of 
continued  business  only  by  having  such  a 
constant  and  reliable  car  supply.    So  the 
packers  built  their  own  refrigerator-cars. 
That  step  on  their  part  marked  not  only  the 
beginning  of  the  private-car  lines,  but  the 
beginning  of  the  live  stock  industry  as  a 
safe  business.    It  was  the  step  as  recognized 
now  by  historians  of  the  live  stock  industry 
that  changed  stock  raising  from  an  adven- 
ture to  a  business. 

This  departure  also  changed  the  entire 
character  of  the  development  of  the  West. 
The  "wild  and  woolly "  characteristics 
of  the  plains  country  gave  place  to 
law  and  order  and  settled  ways  of  doing 
things  and  the  Great  American  Desert  be- 
299 


THE   PACKERS,   THE  PRIVATE 

gan  then  and  there  to  disappear.  Men  who 
are  not  yet  old  can  remember  the  days  when 
their  school  geographies  showed  the  im- 
mense expanse  of  territory  extending  from 
southern  Texas  to  Canada  between  the 
longitude  of  the  Missouri  River  and  the 
Rocky  Mountains  as  a  desert. 

There  used  to  be  acrimonious  debate  as 
to  whether  the  Sahara  of  Africa  or  the 
Great  American  Desert  was  the  more  bar- 
ren. Many  Americans,  determined  to  yield 
first  place  in  nothing  for  their  country, 
proudly  insisted  that,  for  barrenness  and 
general  worthlessness  and  for  territorial  ex- 
tent, the  Great  American  Desert  had  the 
Sahara  absolutely  crowded  out  of  competi- 
tion. It  was  known  that  buffalo  grazed  to 
some  extent  in  the  plains  country,  but  the 
adaptability  of  that  section  for  any  other 
purpose  than  buffalo  grazing  was  not  real- 
ized or  even  suspected  by  any  except  a  few 
Texans  who  had  pastured  on  its  edges. 

The  enterprise  of  the  packers  following 
300 


CAB  LINES  AND  THE  PEOPLE 

the  inauguration  of  modern  refrigeration 
methods  so  extended  the  market  for  cattle 
that  the  cattlemen  little  by  little  commenced 
to  invade  the  Great  American  Desert.    As 
a  direct  consequence,  practically  all  of  what 
was  then  considered  a  desert  now  has  con- 
siderable value  and  most  of  it  is  worth  from 
$30.00  to  $60.00  an  acre  and  is  still  rising 
in  value  as  good  farm  lands. 

The  development  of  the  export  business 
naturally  followed  the  introduction  of  the 
refrigerator-car  into  the  packing  industry 
and   its    effects   upon   live   stock   raising 
and  the  marketing  of  meats.    The  packers 
had  previously  met  with  considerable  suc- 
cess   in    marketing    barreled    beef,    salt 
meats  and  smoked  meats  abroad,  but  the 
growing  beef  business  and  its  possibilities 
were  an  additional  call  upon  their  ingenuity 
and  enterprise  as  merchants.    They  could 
easily  foresee,  as  clear-headed  business  men, 
that  extra  stimulation  of  cattle  raising  and 
the  natural  exigencies  of  the  business  might 
301 


THE   PACKERS,   THE   PRIVATE 

easily  result  at  times  in  a  surplus  of  cattle 
or  beef  products  that  would  have  a  depress- 
ing influence  upon  prices  and  the  business 
generally  if  some  outlet  for  the  surplus 
were  not  found. 

The  keen  competition  of  the  business  also 
prompted  them  to  look  for  markets  wher- 
ever they  could  be  had.  This  competition 
was  probably  sharper  than  it  has  ever  been 
in  any  other  industry  developed  in  this 
country.  The  men  who  had  been  attracted 
to  the  business  were  giants  of  their  kind — 
the  stamp  of  men  who  have  done  all  of  the 
pioneering  and  developing  in  this  country 
at  which  we  now  marvel.  They  could  see 
the  immense  possibilities  opening  before 
them  and  naturally  each  of  them  was  am- 
bitious to  be  first  in  the  race.  It  followed 
that  they  brought  to  bear  all  of  their  tre- 
mendous energies  and  great  ability  to 
broadening  the  field  of  their  operations. 

This  condition  also  led  them  to  devise 
new  ways  and  means  of  so  handling  the 
302 


CAB  LINES  AND   THE   PEOPLE 

products  of  their  packing  houses  that  they 
would  find  a  readier  market  and  of  utilizing 
to  the  last  degree  the  merchantable  possi- 
bilities of  the  by-product.  These  necessi- 
ties of  their  situation  inevitably  drove 
them  into  the  foreign  markets. 

The  effect  of  all  this  pioneering  by  the 
packers  upon  the  cattle  raising  industry  of 
the  country  is  frankly  acknowledged  in  the 
history  to  which  I  have  already  referred, 
compiled  by  authority  of  the  National  Live 
Stock  Association.  That  work,  in  detail- 
ing the  influences  that  operated  in  the  early 
'70s  to  bring  about  new  and  improved 
conditions  in  cattle  raising,  says: 

"But  the  principal  influence  that  was  at 
work  indirectly  in  behalf  of  western  cat- 
tlemen at  that  time  was  the  development 
of  new  features  and  new  methods  in  the 
packing  house  industry.  Heretofore  the 
markets  for  fresh  beef  from  these  sources 
had  been,  in  the  main,  local  in  extent  and 
303 


THE   PACKERS,   THE   PRIVATE 

much  of  their  beef  output  was  in  the  form 
of  salt  cured  products. 

"Exportation  of  beef  on  the  hoof  slowly 
but  steadily  was  attaining  greater  magni- 
tude at  that  time,  but  it  was  so  hampered 
by  foreign  fears — real  or  pretended — of 
various  infections  being  introduced  into 
Europe  by  American  cattle,  and  also  by 
agitations  there  in  favor  of  home  produc- 
tion, that  it  became  necessary  for  our  peo- 
ple to  devise  other  ways  and  means  of  get- 
ting American  beef  into  European  mar- 
kets. 

"As  invariably  happens  in  our  country, 
when  an  imperative  demand  arises  for  new 
ways  of  doing  things,  somebody  steps  for- 
ward promptly  and  points  out  the  neces- 
sary effective  means  by  which  to  do  them. 
In  this  case  the  packing  house  interests 
quickly  solved  the  problem  by  sending  the 
foreigners  prime  dressed  beef  carcasses 
that  were  above  criticism  or  objection ;  and 
with  these  went  corned  beef,  and  as  the 
304 


CAR  LINES  AND  THE  PEOPLE 

new  methods  further  were  developed,  a 
variety  of  other  canned  and  potted  beef 
products. 

"New  vehicles  of  transportation  having 
been  required  for  the  dressed  beef  trade, 
they  came  forth  without  delay  in  the  form 
of  refrigerator-cars  on  the  railroads,  and 
refrigerator  apartments  in  the  ships.  With 
these,  the  packers  at  Chicago,  Kansas  City 
and  other  great  market  centres  were  en- 
abled to  deliver  beef  carcasses  on  the  far- 
ther side  of  the  Atlantic  in  as  perfect  con- 
dition as  that  in  which  they  were  placed 
upon  the  blocks  of  retailers  within  sight  of 
the  packing  houses;  and  with  these  cars 
to  extend  their  home  trade  in  dressed  beef 
to  every  part  of  the  country  accessible  by 
railroad. 

"This  new  branch  of  the  packing  house 
industry,  which,  within  a  few  years  later, 
became  by  far  the  largest  part  of  it,  made 
its  influence  felt  strongly,  and  in  1876  and 
in  1877  had  risen  to  greater  proportions. 
20  305 


THE  PACKERS,   THE  PRIVATE 

Its  magnitude  in  1878  was  reflected  in  the 
fact  that  nearly  forty  per  cent,  of  all  the 
live  stock  marketed  in  Chicago  during  the 
year,  or  about  500,000  head,  went  to  con- 
sumers in  the  form  of  dressed  beef  from 
the  packing  houses  of  Chicago.  At  Kan- 
sas City  and  other  packing  house  centres 
the  dressed  beef  industry  held  about  the 
same  ratio  to  the  total  number  of  cattle 
put  upon  their  markets." 

But  the  opening  of  foreign  markets  and 
development  of  the  packing  industry  of 
Chicago  did  not  all  at  once  put  the  cattle 
raising  and  meat  producing  industry  on 
the  basis  that  we  know  now.  The  grade  of 
cattle  and  the  grade  of  beef  produced  in  the 
'70s  was  still  not  of  the  very  first  class 
and  beef  was  not  so  universally  eaten  as  it 
is  now.  This  condition  was  reflected  in  the 
prices  that  prevailed  at  that  time.  In  1876 
and  1877,  $2.75  to  $3.00  per  cwt.  was  con- 
sidered a  good  price  for  beef  cattle. 

Some  Texas  men  thought  they  had  a 
306 


CAR  LINES  AND  THE  PEOPLE 

"nice  market"  when  fat  beeves  from  their 
ranch  corrals  could  be  sold  around  $2.25 
per  cwt.  Other  records  of  the  period  give 
$2.50  and  $3.00  per  cwt.  as  considered  an 
excellent  price.  A  record  of  top  prices  by 
months  for  northwestern  "rangers"  in  the 
summer  of  1878,  except  during  August, 
shows  that  the  very  highest  prices  ranged 
from  $3.75  to  $4.40  per  cwt.  "Texas"  cat- 
tle during  the  same  period  sold  for  $3.00  to 
$3.90  per  cwt.  The  average  price  for 
"rangers"  during  a  six  months'  period 
was  only  $3.95  and  for  "Texans"  $3.55  per 

cwt. 

At  Albany,  in  that  year,  extra  cattle 
weighing  from  1,250  to  1,300  Ibs.  brought 
only  $5.00  to  $5.37V2  per  cwt.  and  this  had 
to  cover  freight  from  the  far  western 
ranges.  Dressed  beef  of  the  same  extra 
quality  sold  at  $10.50  to  $10.75  per  cwt. 

By    comparing   these    price    quotations 
with  prices  to-day,  we  have  a  striking  illus- 
tration of  how  development  of  the  packing 
307 


THE   PACKERS,   THE   PRIVATE 

industry,  with  its  utilization  of  by-products, 
and  its  foreign  market  finding  has  reduced 
at  both  ends  the  margin  between  live  cat- 
tle prices  and  dressed  beef  prices,  making 
live  cattle  prices  nigher  and  making 
dressed  beef  prices  lower. 

In  1878  we  find  the  wholesale  price  of 
extra  beef,  dressed,  brought  down  from 
$13.00  and  $13.25  in  1874  to  $10.50  to 
$10.75  a  cwt.  The  cattle  that  produced  this 
$10.50  to  $10.75  beef  sold  at  $5.00  to  $5.37% 
a  cwt.,  so  there  was  still  a  difference  of 
about  $5.50  a  cwt.  between  beef  cattle  on 
the  hoof  and  the  same  cattle  dressed.  To- 
day, as  the  daily  market  quotations  show, 
the  price  difference  between  live  beef  cat- 
tle and  the  same  cattle  dressed  is  only  about 
$2.00  a  cwt.,  and  frequently  it  is  less.  This 
elimination  of  the  wide  margin  between 
live  and  dressed  beef  prices  is  due  entirely 
to  the  saving  effected  by  the  packer  in 
utilizing  the  by-products,  and  finding  a  for- 
eign market  for  meats  that  otherwise  would 
308 


CAB  LINES  AND   THE  PEOPLE 

be  handled  at  a  loss,  and  so  would  make  it 
necessary  to  ask  higher  prices  for  the  meats 
consumed  in  this  country. 

It  is  easy  to  study  this  phase  of  the  sub- 
ject in  the  market  quotations  published 
from  day  to  day  in  the  newspapers.  The 
packer  sells  at  wholesale  the  dressed  beef 
from  every  steer  slaughtered  for  much  less 
than  he  paid  for  that  steer  on  the  hoof.  He 
must  pay  all  expenses,  get  all  of  his  profit, 
and  make  up  the  difference  between  live 
cost  and  dressed  selling  price  out  of  the  by- 
product materials,  most  of  which  were 
wasted  before  the  early  packers  applied 
their  genius  to  the  business. 

It  is  obvious  that  the  slaughtering  and 
distributing  of  beef  if  undertaken  by  any 
agency  less  perfectly  equipped  than  the 
packers  are,  would  necessitate  very  much 
higher  prices  to  the  consumer  than  are  now 
paid.  Commissioner  of  Corporations  Gar- 
field's  report  shows  that  the  packers  get  less 
than  a  dollar  a  head  out  of  the  cattle 
309 


THE   PACKEES,    THE   PRIVATE 

handled.  To  do  this  they  must  utilize  every 
scrap  of  by-product  to  the  last  degree,  and 
then  find  a  market  for  it  in  every  part  of  the 
world. 

The  influence  of  the  packers,  and  their 
development  of  the  export  trade,  along  with 
the  domestic  business,  became  pronounced 
about  1884  and  1885.  The  year  1884  was 
the  first  in  which  one  million  cattle  were 
slaughtered  in  Chicago.  Since  1890,  at 
times,  nearly  two  and  one-half  million  head 
of  cattle  have  been  slaughtered  in  Chicago 
in  a  year,  and  in  many  years  since  1890 
from  one  million  to  a  million  and  a  half  of 
cattle  have  been  received  at  Chicago  and  re- 
shipped  on  the  hoof,  more  cattle  being 
shipped  out  on  the  hoof  than  the  entire  re- 
ceipts amounted  to  before  the  packers  be- 
came a  factor  in  the  market. 

The  great  changes  in  the  industry  have 
come  since  1885.  The  tremendous  develop- 
ment, not  only  in  the  packing  industry 
itself,  but  in  the  raising  of  stock  and  the 
310 


CAR  LINES  AND  THE   PEOPLE 

new  and  improved  methods  in  both 
branches  of  the  industry,  have  nearly  all 
come  within  that  time.  Speaking  of  this 
period  of  revolution,  the  same  official  his- 
tory of  the  live  stock  business  which  I  have 
previously  quoted  has  this  to  say : 

"What  had  been  an  adventure  was  con- 
verted into  a  business.    The  rearing  of  live 
stock  on  the  western  plains  and  in  the  moun- 
tain   valleys    ceased    to    be    a    reckless 
1  chancing'  of  things,  ceased  to  be  a  spec- 
ulation, and  became  a  careful,  systematic, 
commercial  enterprise,  seeking  regular  and 
reasonable  returns  for  its  output  of  beef 
and  mutton,  which  were  made  to  be  of  the 
highest    grade.    The    typical    owner    of 
great  herds  of  cattle  no  longer  was  distin- 
guished by  a  broad-brimmed  hat,  no  longer 
stuffed  his  trousers  into  the  tops  of  high 
boots,  no  longer  wore  accoutrements  sug- 
gestive of  wildness  and  wooliness,  but  pre- 
sented the  appearance  of  a  conservative, 
unostentatious  man  of  business.    He  was 
311 


THE   PACKERS,    THE    PRIVATE 

not  out  of  place,  but  was  at  home  and  at  his 
ease  wherever  he  might  be,  whether  in  the 
great  market  cities  or  at  his  ranch — very 
much  a  man  of  the  business  world. ' ' 

The  factors  in  working  this  change, 
according  to  the  authority  I  have  men- 
tioned, were  improved  stock,  prudent  man- 
agement and  individual  control  of  more  or 
less  land  upon  which  each  stockman  oper- 
ated, accompanied  by  the  use  of  fences. 
These  factors  were  given  a  chance  to  oper- 
ate by  the  work  of  the  packers.  It  was  the 
packers  who  created  a  great  central  mar- 
ket, who  devised  ways  and  means  of  dispos- 
ing of  the  dressed  beef  and  the  beef  prod- 
uct, and  who  opened  up  foreign  markets 
to  take  care  of  surplus  ranch  products. 

It  was  their  work,  I  repeat,  which  gave 
the  live  stock  industry  an  opportunity  to  be 
converted  from  an  adventure  to  a  business. 
They  encouraged  the  growing  of  quality. 
They  showed  the  western  and  southwestern 
ranchers  that  the  long-horned  Texas  steer 
312 


CAE  LINES  AND  THE   PEOPLE 

was  neither  the  best  nor  the  most  profitable 
animal  to  be  grown  for  market.  They  gave 
the  impetus  to  improving  the  grade  of 
range  cattle.  The  ranchmen  commenced 
spending  a  part  of  their  profits  for  blooded 
bulls  and  crossing  them  with  the  native  cat- 
tle. They  commenced  to  raise  stock  for 
meat  and  not  for  tallow.  This  phase  of  the 
change  has  been  commented  upon  in  the 
official  history  I  have  quoted  as  follows : 

' '  The  best,  and  therefore  the  high  priced 
beef,  lies  along  the  animal's  back,  and  any- 
one can  understand  that  a  broad-backed 
steer  that  has  utilized  its  food  to  increase 
its  aggregate  of  sirloin  and  porterhouse 
parts  is  far  more  valuable  than  the  narrow- 
backed,  slab-sided  animal,  perhaps  of  nearly 
the  same  gross  weight,  but  which  has  util- 
ized most  of  its  food  in  the  production  of 
tallow.  The  western  cattleman  saw  this 
and  began  to  produce,  with  the  same 
amount  of  food,  beeves  that  yielded  the 
high  priced  steaks  worth  from  15  cents  to 
313 


THE   PACKERS,   THE   PRIVATE 

25  cents  a  pound  in  a  normal  retail  market, 
instead  of  tallow  and  medium  or  low  grade 
meats,  worth  whatever  a  buyer  could  be 
persuaded  to  pay  for  them. ' ' 

From  these  changes  in  the  methods  of 
raising  cattle  and  marketing  them  and  their 
products  have  come  the  changes  in  the 
character  of  the  range  country.  The  west- 
ern cattleman's  home  place,  while  it  is  still 
called  a  ranch,  now  partakes  more  of  the 
nature  of  what  we  are  accustomed  to  think 
of  when  we  say  farm.  He  does  not  depend 
upon  letting  his  cattle  run  out  of  doors 
all  the  year  round,  finding  their  food 
where  they  can.  He  provides  shelter  for 
stormy  weather.  He  plants  and  harvests 
crops  that  will  serve  as  fodder  in  the  short 
grass  season;  he  cuts  hay,  and  stores  it 
against  the  time  of  grass  shortage. 

The  mowing  machine  is  now  as  promi- 
nent a  part  of  the  furniture  of  the  average 
cattle  ranch  as  the  "chuck-wagon"  used  to 
be.  Small  holdings  are  taking  the  place 
314 


CAE  LINES  AND  THE   PEOPLE 

of  the  large  ranges.  While  there  may  not 
be  so  many  ''cattle  kings"  as  there  used  to 
be  in  the  business,  there  are  innumerably 
more  men  who  are  making  money  at  it. 

Along  with  the  revolution  in  the  produc- 
tion of  beef  cattle  which  I  have  sketched, 
there  has  come  great  improvement  in  facil- 
ities for  getting  the  cattle  to  market,  for 
feeding  and  watering  in  transit,  and  so  on. 
These  changes  have  had  a  marked  influence 
upon  the  allied  business  of  feeding  or  fin- 
ishing cattle  for  market. 

Stock  cattle  are  taken  from  the  big  graz- 
ing ranches  and  are  turned  over  to  smaller 
farmers  further  north  and  east,  who  feed 
and  finish  them  for   the  market,   and  so 
enable  us  to  get  the  prime  beef  which  we 
are  accustomed  to  have  upon  our  tables. 
This  is  a  change  that  has  brought  real  pros- 
perity to  a  great  part  of  the  western  farm- 
ing community,  particularly  in  corn  rais- 
ing states  like  Illinois,  Iowa,  Kansas,  Ne- 
braska and  Missouri.     Instead  of  selling 
315 


THE   PACKERS,   THE   PRIVATE 

his  corn  for  25  cents  or  30  cents  a  bushel, 
the  farmer  now  puts  this  corn  into  beef  cat- 
tle and  gets  40  and  50  cents  a  bushel  for  it ; 
and  the  farmer  who  does  not  want  to  feed 
cattle,  but  has  corn,  also  gets  a  higher  price 
because  there  is  not  the  same  relative 
quantity  of  corn  going  into  the  market. 

These  same  changes  in  cattle  growing 
have  helped  to  give  a  little  additional 
profit  to  industries  as  far  removed  from 
meat  producing  as  the  cotton  industry. 
Cotton-seed  that  used  to  be  waste  is  now 
utilized,  in  part  at  least,  in  cattle  feeding 
enterprises. 

That  the  pioneering  and  foreign  market 
hunting  efforts  of  the  early  American 
packers  were  great  factors  in  bringing 
about  these  changes  in  American  indus- 
trial life— changes  that  were  and  have  con- 
tinued to  be  beneficial  to  hundreds  of  thou- 
sands of  American  people — is  evidenced  by 
what  we  read  when  we  look  back  concern- 
316 


CAB  LINES  AND  THE  PEOPLE 

ing  the  introduction  of  American  meats 
into  foreign  markets. 

An  English  paper  of  twenty  years  ago 
had  a  paragraph  to  the  effect  that  ''prune 
Scotch  cattle  and  Highland  mutton  are  as 
drops  in  the  bucket  compared  with  the  enor- 
mous imports  from  America."  It  said  in 
the  same  article  that  a  Mr.  Henry  S.  Fitter 
had  disposed  of,  to  retail  butchers,  $12,000 
worth  of  American  meats  in  one  day ;  a  con- 
signment from  the  Chicago  packers. 

This  meant  that  the  meat  so  sold  came 
from  cattle  which  had  been  grown  on  west- 
ern farms  or  ranges,  brought  to  Chicago, 
and  there  converted  into  beef  and  then  mar- 
keted four  thousand  five  hundred  miles 
toward  the  other  side  of  the  world.  The 
American  farmer  received  the  benefit  of 
this  enterprise. 

But  the  packer  of  that  day,  who  was 

doing  his  utmost  to  extend  the  demand  for 

American  farm  products,  did  not  have  easy 

sailing  and  complimentary  words  any  more 

317 


THE   PACKERS,   THE   PRIVATE 

than  lie  has  to-day.  Both  at  home  and 
abroad  he  had  to  fight  his  way  every  step 
he  took.  At  the  great  London  beef  mar- 
kets, as  elsewhere,  the  salesman  tried  to 
shut  out  American  meats,  but,  of  course, 
American  enterprise  was  equal  to  obstacles 
of  that  kind. 

The  Americans  had  meat  to  sell  and  were 
there  to  sell  it.  If  they  could  not  sell  it  in 
one  place  or  one  market  they  would  make 
a  market  of  their  own.  They  did  so  and 
they  did  it  without  resorting  to  any  subter- 
fuges, or  attempting  to  palm  off  American 
meats  as  "home  grown"  to  avoid  discrim- 
ination. They  were  out  to  make  a  market 
for  American  meats,  and  they  sold  them 
for  just  what  they  were,  knowing  that  the 
quality  would  create  a  demand. 

Here  at  home,  when  the  successful  inno- 
vations of  the  packers  commenced  to  attract 
attention,  they  had  to  run  the  gauntlet  of 
hostile  legislation  that  was  even  more  trou- 
blesome, in  some  respects,  than  what  they 
318 


CAE  LINES  AND  THE  PEOPLE 

are  threatened  with  now.  The  rapid  de- 
velopment of  cattle  raising  had  brought  on 
the  cattle  boom  of  the  early  '80s,  which  I 
have  mentioned  elsewhere,  and,  of  course, 
that  boom  had  its  inevitable  disastrous  re- 
action. The  packers  were  given  the  blame, 
of  course,  for  the  low  prices  which  prevailed 
in  the  late  '80s  and  which  were  due  to 
nothing  on  earth  except  an  increase  in  the 
supply  of  cattle  that  far  outstripped  the  de- 
mand and  all  the  energy  and  resourceful- 
ness of  the  packers  in  building  new  markets. 

The  year  of  1889,  as  we  look  back,  was  re- 
markable for  the  efforts  made  in  widely 
separated  parts  of  the  country  to  hamper 
the  development  of  the  dressed  beef  and 
packing  business  by  hostile  legislation. 

Virginia  made  a  law  that  no  fresh  meat 
should  be  offered  for  sale  at  any  place  one 
hundred  miles  from  where  it  had  been 
slaughtered,  unless  inspected  alive  by  the 
local  inspectors.  The  inspection  fee  ranged 
319 


THE   PACKERS,   THE   PRIVATE 

from  $6.00  to  $10.00;  a  prohibitive  price, 
of  course. 

Topeka  tried  by  ordinance  to  shut  out  the 
dressed  beef  of  Kansas  City. 

Minnesota  enacted  a  law  providing  that 
no  beef  should  be  sold  within  any  munici- 
pality of  the  state  unless  inspected  by  the 
local  officers  within  twenty-four  hours  be- 
fore slaughter. 

Colorado  undertook  to  prohibit  the  sale 
of  beef,  mutton  or  pork  unless  inspected  on 
the  hoof  before  slaughter. 

Indiana's  law  required  that  beef,  mutton, 
veal,  lamb  or  pork  had  to  be  inspected  alive 
in  the  county  where  it  was  offered  for  sale. 

Of  course  none  of  that  legislation  stood 
the  test  of  review  in  the  courts.  I  mention 
these  cases  merely  to  illustrate  the  obstacles 
which  the  packing  industry  has  had  to  fight, 
and  fight  alone,  while  it  has  been  opening 
and  expanding  markets  for  the  products  of 
the  ranch  and  farm. 

What  the  Chicago  packers  accomplished 
320 


CAK  LINES  AND  THE  PEOPLE 

in  the  face  of  such  opposition  is  best  illus- 
trated by  a  little  comparative  figuring. 

In  the  twenty  years  from  1880  to  1900, 
the  increase  in  population  of  the  United 
States  was  in  round  numbers  fifty  per  cent. 
During  that  same  period  the  number  of  beef 
cattle  marketed  at  the  four  principal  mar- 
kets increased  five  hundred  per  cent.  I 
know  of  no  other  lines  of  business  dealing 
with  natural  products — cotton,  wool,  grain 

in  which  such  a  marvelous  increase  in 

the  quantity  of  material  to  be  handled  has 
been  so  successfully  coped  with. 

But  the  packers  seemed  to  be  equal  to  any 
emergency,  and  in  spite  of  one  or  two  com- 
paratively low-priced  periods,  which  were 
due  to  perfectly  natural  causes,  they  kept 
the  market  in  a  healthy  condition;  and 
some  stock  raisers,  the  careful  business  men 
among  them,  made  money  practically  all 
the  time. 

When  we  talk  about  low-priced  cattle  and 
of  farmers  losing  money  in  their  cattle  ven- 
21  321 


THE   PACKERS,   THE   PRIVATE 

tures,  is  it  not  fair,  instead  of  blaming  it 
all  on  a  "beef  trust,"  to  remember  that 
raising  cattle  is  a  business  like  selling  shoes 
or  dry  goods  or  making  chairs  1 

Not  nearly  all  of  the  people  who  venture 
into  these  various  other  undertakings  make 
money;  statistics  show,  I  believe,  that  the 
great  majority  that  go  into  business  meet 
with  failure.  I  think  you  will  find  that 
the  percentage  of  those  who  lose  money  in 
raising  or  feeding  cattle  for  market  is 
smaller  than  in  almost  any  other  line  of 
producing  effort.  I  believe,  too,  that  wher- 
ever you  find  a  man  in  the  cattle  business 
who  will  class  as  a  good  business  man  you 
will  find  one  who  makes  money  almost 
every  year,  and  one  who,  taking  into  ac- 
count a  reasonable  period  of  years,  makes 
a  profit  that  is  entirely  satisfactory  to  him, 
figured  on  the  basis  of  his  investment. 

In  this  connection  I  am  moved  to  quote 
a  few  words  from  an  article  by  Mr.  Samuel 
W.  Allerton,  written  a  short  time  ago.  Mr. 
322 


CAE  LINES  AND  THE  PEOPLE 

Allerton  was  one  of  the  early  pork  packers 
and  cattle  dealers  in  the  Chicago  market. 
He  was  in  the  business  quite  a  long  time, 
but  now,  for  several  years,  he  has  been  ex- 
tensively a  farmer,  owning,  I  believe,  the 
largest  farm  in  Illinois;  and  a  large  part 
of  his  farming  business  revolves  around 
the  feeding  and  finishing  of  cattle  for  mar- 
ket. In  an  article  for  a  live  stock  paper  Mr. 
Allerton  said : 

"I  remember  when  I  first  went  into  the 
business,  in  1853,  New  York  consumed  about 
three  thousand  two  hundred  cattle  per 
week,  Boston  about  five  hundred,  Philadel- 
phia five  hundred  and  Baltimore  about  two 
hundred.  There  were  not  many  more  than 
five  thousand  cattle  transported  per  week. 
Now  we  transport  at  least  one  hundred  and 
twenty-five  thousand  over  our  railroads,  so 
you  see  the  cattle  industry  has  increased 
very  largely  over  our  population,  and  we 
must  give  the  dressed  beef  men  credit  for 
finding  a  market  for  this  great  surplus,  as 
323 


THE   PACKERS,   THE  PRIVATE 

they  have  hunted  a  market  for  it  in  every 
spot  on  the  globe." 

As  to  the  farmer's  point  of  view  on  this 
subject,  Mr.  Allerton  said:  " Being  a 
farmer,  I  know  how  they  feel.  They,  of 
course,  always  want  a  little  more,  and  every 
little  newspaper  in  the  country  thinks  it  is 
smart  to  howl  about  the  dressed  beef 
'trust,'  when  the  truth  is  there  is  no  body 
of  men  which  has  done  so  much  to  promote 
the  live  stock  interests  of  this  country  as  the 
dressed  beef  men.  They  have  put  fresh 
beef  into  every  state  in  the  Union  where 
they  were  not  accustomed  to  eating  fresh 
beef,  and  they  have  hunted  the  world  over 
to  find  a  market  for  the  coarse  cuts  of  beef. 
Every  market  which  they  are  in  has  steadily 
grown  and  increased,  which  is  evidence  that 
they  have  been  beneficial  to  the  live  stock 
interests  of  this  country." 


324 


CAB  LINES  AND  THE  PEOPLE 
CHAPTER  XIV 

THE  GROWTH  OF   PORK  PACKING 

!TT  7 HAT  I  have  said  as  to  dressed  beef 
VV  and  live  stock  raising,  and  the  in- 
fluence upon  the  industry  exerted 
by  the  packers  in  their  discovery  of  new 
methods  of  marketing  and  of  new  markets, 
applies  with  equal  force,  in  practically 
every  detail,  to  all  the  other  branches  of 
raising  meat  animals  and  converting  them 
into  food  for  the  table.  The  growth  of  pork 
packing  in  the  West  illustrates  what  I 
mean. 

Pork  packing  was  a  considerable  indus- 
try before  the  dressed  beef  business  came 
into  existence  on  any  large  scale.  The  very 
earliest  packers  purchased  live  hogs  at 
many  different  points  in  the  West,  slaugh- 
tered and  cured  them  and  shipped  the  prod- 
uct to  all  parts  of  this  country  and  to  for- 
325 


eign  countries.  In  the  period  between  1880 
and  1885,  before  the  dressed  beef  business 
had  attained  proportions  at  all  remarkable, 
pork  packing  was  already  an  important 
business.  During  that  period  the  western 
packers  slaughtered  fifty-two  million,  three 
hundred  and  twenty-two  thousand  hogs,  an 
average  of  ten  million,  four  hundred  and 
sixty-four  thousand,  four  hundred  hogs  a 
year. 

Now  the  average  swine  raiser  probably 
has  not  noticed  any  particular  increase  in 
the  raising  and  marketing  of  hogs  during 
recent  years.  Yet,  during  the  last  five  pack- 
ing seasons  ending  with  March,  1906,  pork 
packing  at  western  points  absorbed  very 
nearly  one  hundred  and  eighteen  million 
hogs,  an  average  of  twenty-three  million 
six  hundred  thousand  hogs  a  year.  This 
immense  increase  in  the  production  of  hogs 
has  been  handled — purchased,  slaughtered 
and  marketed — without  a  break  or  a  ma- 
terial change  in  the  market;  in  fact,  my 
326 


CAB  LINES  AND  THE  PEOPLE 

recollection  is  that  the  price  has  been  going 
up  practically  all  of  the  time. 

The  handling  of  this  immense  increase 
in  hog  production  is  due  entirely  to  the  busi- 
ness improvements  brought  about  by  the 
large  packers  in  their  dressed  beef  and 
kindred  businesses.  This  would  seem  to  be 
so  from  the  fact  that  there  has  been  no 
material  increase  in  hog  marketing  or  pork 
packing  at  any  of  the  markets  where  the 
beef  packers  are  not  doing  business. 

The  methods  of  the  packers,  due  to  refrig- 
eration and  transportation  facilities  re- 
sulting from  their  private-car  enterprises, 
have  made  hog  marketing  and  pork  pack- 
ing an  all-year-round  industry  instead  of 
a  winter  industry  as  it  used  to  be.  This,  of 
course,  is  an  advantage  to  the  hog  raisers, 
not  only  because  it  gives  them  a  market 
all  the  year  round,  but  because  it  has 
brought  about  the  absorption  of  practically 
double  the  number  of  hogs. 

To  show  this  more  clearly,  let  us  glance 
327 


THE   PACKERS,   THE   PRIVATE 

at  the  figures  showing  the  number  of  hogs 
packed  at  Chicago  and  classified  as  winter 
packing  and  summer  packing.  The  follow- 
ing table  shows  that  while  winter  packing 
at  Chicago  has  remained  almost  stationary 
in  the  last  twenty  years,  summer  packing 
has  caused  the  total  pack  to  be  almost 
double : 


HOGS  PACKED  AT  CHICAGO 

SUMMER  WINTER 

YEAR.  PACKING.  PACKING. 

1882-83     1,664,957  2,557,823 

1883-84     1,900,408  2,011,384 

1884-85     1,859,988  2,368,217 

1885-86     2,535,678  2,393,052 

1886-87     -. 2,581,752  1,844,189 

1887-88     2,000,741  1,731,503 

1888-89     1,774,228  1,429,723 

1889-90     2,294,027  2,179,440 

1890-91     3,211,144  2,908,418 

1891-92     2,498,754  2,706,284 

1892-93     2,873,883  1,478,212 

328 


CAB  LINES  AND  THE  PEOPLE 

1893-94  2,523,587  1,695,980 

1894-95  2,817,734  2,475,468 

1895-96  3,114,940  2,375,470 

1896-97  3,684,220  2,283,375 

1897-98  4,074,535  2,672,730 

1898-99  4,767,290  3,249,385 

1899-1900 4,249,860  2,869,580 

1900-01  4,298,420  2,970,095 

1901-02  4,202,095  3,433,905 

1902-03  3,908,260  2,952,193 

1903-04  3,787,126  2,925,960 

1904-05  3,177,842  2,812,588 

1905-06  3,545,197  2,592,866 

Chicago,  of  course,  has  no  monopoly  in 
pork  packing.  This  is  an  industry  that  is 
widely  distributed  throughout  the  West. 
The  following  table  shows  the  number 
of  hogs  packed  in  the  West  for  the  twelve 
months  ending  March  1st,  1906,  at  the  fif- 
teen leading  points  (the  others  being 
lumped)  with  comparisons  for  previous 

years : 

329 


THE   PACKERS,   THE   PRIVATE 


1 

0 

CO 
L- 

eo 

01 

rH 
IO 

05 

Cl 

LO 

Cl 

0 
Cl 
LO 

eo 

CO 

t- 

CO 

05 

CO 
05 

00 
Cl 

C5 

CO 
CO 
Cl 

eo 

Cl 
0 

co 

Cl 

Cl 

i-H 

»o 

O      <M 

co    oo 

Cl 

05 

O5 

rH 

rH 
Cl 
CO 

C) 
OJ 

rH 

t- 

o 

LO 

LO 

rH 

CO 
LO 

CD 

CO 
00 

CD 
CO 

cl 

CO 
CO 
CO 

01 
CO 

05 

CQ 

rH 

LO 

01 
CO 

CO 
Cl 

CO 

o 

CO 

oo    o 

Ol     O 
kO     <M 

TH 

rH 

O 

IO 

rH 
10 

Cl 

CO 
Cl 

c4 

01 
Cl 
LO 

o 

10 

rH 

O 
o 

Cl 

CO 
0 

CO 
LO 

e5 

rH 
I- 

CO 

o 

CO 

10 

CO 

10 

CO 

LO 

Cl 

LO 

LO 
CO 
CO 

Cl 

CD 

Cl 

o 

CO 

TH 

CO 

CD 

i-H      CO 
M 

co    ^^ 

IO     t- 

o    co 

o 

0 

oo 

CD 
(M 

I-H 
CC 
05 

rH 
Cl 

CO 
CO 

LO 

10 

00 

rH 

CO 

rH 
rH 

Ok 

CO 

Cl 

CD 

CO 
IO 

to 

0 
0 
LO 

o 

CD 

eo 

CO 

CO 

I- 

rH 
LO 

rH 
rH 

O5 
CO 
00 

rH      O 
CO     0 

t-    eo 

c4 
o 

O 
O 

o 

i-H 

Cl 
0 
00 

Cl 

CD 

rH 

I- 

0 

i-H 

O 

rH 

eo 

Cl 

00 

I- 

CO 

CO 
0 

rH 

CO 

01 
Cl 

O 
Cl 

Cl 

0 

o 

rH 

eo 

Cl 

0 

0 
0 

CO 
CO 

i-H 
05 
IO 

CD 

rH 
CO 

eo 

O5 

0 

rH     eo 
CO 

O     CD 
00      t~ 

in    eo 

TH 

§ 

co 
co 
eo 

Cl 

t 

0 
01 

CO 

IO 

Cl 

LO 

Cl 
Cl 

01 
CD 

IO 

o 

Cl 

LO 

0 
rH 

CO 

Cl 

o 

rH 

co 

CO 
Cl 

LO 

CO 

0k 
l- 

00 

CO 
LO 

co 

o 

CO 
rH 

eo 
»o 

oo    ^ 

§ 

eo 
10 

eo 

•HH 
01 

Cl 

CO 
Cl 

00 

00 
LO 

CO 

rH 

O 

0 
0 

co 

CO 

co 

00 

05 

0 

CO 
CO 

Cl 
LO 

o 

00 
CO 

Cl 

CO 

0 

o 

Cl 

eq 

Cl 

CO 

CO 
00 

eo 

CO 

O5 

0 
0 

rH     IO 
CO 

CO      rH 
CD     t- 

10     10 

0 

05 

rH 

0 

o 
co 
°o, 

co 
oo 

0 

IO 

LO 

0^ 

Q 
IO 

IO 

** 
o 
o 

04* 

CO 

& 

CO 

o 
eo 

Ol 

IO 

CD 
CO 

CO 

eo 

t- 

co 

00 

LO 
LO 

CO 
Cl 

CO 
Cl 

i-T 

CO 

rH 

rH 
05 
CO 

9 
CO 
t- 

rH 

rH 
Cl 
Cl 

rH 
Cl 

IO 

CO 

o 

CO 

CO 
C] 

CO 

9 

CO 
01 

I- 

IO 

05 
LO 

LO 
i-H 

t- 

00 
CO 

01 

Cl 

o 

Cl 

t» 
o 

eo 

0^ 

eo 
eo 

O5 

O5      IO 
(M     O 

r-T  cT 

CO 

O     CO 

co    oo 

CO 

o 

0> 

co 

rH 
t- 

CD 
CO 

O 

CO 
rH 

o 
I- 

10 

CO 
CI 
rH 

IO 

CO 

IO 

CO 
CO 

Cl 
0 
CO 

rH 
O 
LO 

CO 
OO 

LO 
Cl 

co 

c. 

rH 

eo 

t- 

co 

o 

rH 

00 

CO 
CO 
Cl 

0 

eo 

rH 

Ttl       IO 

rH     t- 

co    eo 

id 

o 

co 

o 

CO 

Cl 

Cl 

CD 
Cl 

44 

rH. 

01 
LO 

rH 

CO 

00 

Cl 
LO 

o 

CO 

rH 
CO 

04 

CO 

rH 

CI 

rH 

Cl 

"H 
CO 

C5 
CD 
Cl 

I- 

CO 

CD 

rH 
LO 

00 
rH 

o 

Cl 

Cl 

o 

CO 

o 

CO     CO 
CO 

O5      CO 

Ol     CO 
CO     ^ 

o 

01 

o 

O5 
05 

0 
CO 

LO 
0 

CO 
0 
Cl 

10 

I- 

Cl 

CO 

-t 
co 

10 
CO 
00 

CO 
CO 
10 

10 

ci 

05 
CO 
CO 

CO 

CO 

<* 

0 

h* 

01 
LO 

-f 

CO 
00 

00 
CO 

CD 

rH 

co    oo 

O     rH 
t^-      O5 

CD' 

0 

eo 
§ 

Cl 

rH 

Cl 
10 

o> 

Cl 

rH 

10 

CO 

O 

10 
Cl 

10 

Cl 

eo 

0 

1- 

r4' 

O 
IO 

CO 

CO 
CO 

t- 

Cl 

eo 

CO 

eo 

o 

•71 

I- 

CO 
01 

LO 

Cl 

CD 

CO 
CD 

rH 
CO 

CO 

05 

eo 

CO     CO 
CO 

oo    o 
eo    eo 
eo    t- 

10 
0 
01 

oo 

CO 
rH 

CO 
0 
rH 

t- 

Ok 

rH 

I- 
I- 

1- 

CD 

-f 
CD 

00 

0k 

CO 

TH 

oq 

CO 
CO 

k> 

rH 

CO 
CO 

CO 
CO 

rH 

.—  1 

01 
C5 

01 

id 

1- 
09 

rH 

eo 

rH 
rH 

»o 

eo    ^* 

CD     t- 

o   »o 

co 

99 

04 

1-1 

TH 

rH 

CO 
CO 

eo    10 

CO 

. 

f, 

. 

B 

. 

. 

. 

hi 

I 

1 
I 

! 

•  — 

6 

3 

• 
• 

9 

UJ 

0 
"s 

X 

m 

Indianapolis 

Cincinnati  . 

6 

f 

+J 

CO 

s 

I 

JO 

Ottumwa  .  . 

Cleveland  . 

Louisville  . 

a 

g 

_o 

1 

Nebraska  Ci 

Fifteen  pi 

fe  .0 

o    'ci 

_       -4-> 

3  & 

330 


CAB  LINES  AND  THE  PEOPLE 

For  these  twenty-five  million,  five  hun- 
dred and  seventy-four  thousand,  seven  hun- 
dred and  sixty  hogs  slaughtered  at  west- 
ern points  in  1905-06,  the  western  packers 
paid  the  western  farmers  the   enormous 
sum  of  $302,487,000,  or  nearly  $12  a  head. 
Eastern    slaughterers,    during    the    same 
period,  paid  eastern  farmers  about  $65,- 
000,000  for  five  million,  seven  hundred  and 
ten  thousand  hogs,  or  nearly  $11.50  a  head. 
The  tendency   of  prices  has  been  up- 
ward, with,  of  course,  fluctuations  due  to 
natural  causes,  as  in  1902,  when  the  short 
corn  crop  sent  up  the  price  of  beef  cattle, 
and  sent  up  the  price  of  hogs  to  an  abnor- 
mal figure  for  the  same  reason,  as  well  as 
through  sympathy  with  the  higher  price  of 
cattle  and  beef.     I  am  presenting  here  a 
table  showing  the  monthly  range  of  cash 
prices  for  live  hogs,  the  highest  and  lowest 
price  of  the  month,  covering  a  period  of 
eleven  years  in  the  Chicago  market.    The 
table  is  as  follows : 

331 


oo 


oo  « 

r-l    4B- 


-ee- 


oo 


eo  o  T   o  in  o  in  I-H  rjj  o  -^  o  10  t-;  oq  o  o;  o  o   o»  10  w  in  •«* 


. 

g  in  oq  •*  iq  «q  o  eo  iq  •*  w  «q  os  o  M  rn  o  oo  ffi  o  01  t-.  os  «q  o> 

O>  IO  «£>  1C  <S>  »rf  t-^  <O  t-^  «D  t^  «O  t^  t^  oo'  «O  l^  <D  00  «D  t-^  »O  «D  LC  CO 

IH  -ee- 


t>-  IH  o  LO  in  oo  tt>  to  •«*  r-  \a  10  t-  i-j  in  o>i  oo  ij<  10  i     oo  krs  o  01 


rf? 


rH  O   -^J  rH    tn  IO    !>;  t-;   «O  O   W  «O    O  i-J    51  •*    OO  (?)    CO  OO    C<5  O1    tfi  CO 

•*'  w  •*  in  •*  ITS  •*  »c  •*  10  •*  in  ir;  ' 


1 1 1 S !  1 1 1 S !  1 1 1 

332 


CAR  LINES  AND  THE  PEOPLE 

This  tremendous  growth  in  hog  raising, 
in  consequence  of  the  improved  business 
methods  and  foreign  market-finding  by  the 
packers,  has  been  as  widespread  in  point 
of  benefits  conferred  as  the  growth  of  the 
stock  raising  industry.  It  has  had  its  effect 
upon  every  farmer  who  raises  a  few  hogs, 
not  only  throughout  the  great  West,  but  in 
the  more  thickly  populated  eastern  states 
where  hogs  are  raised  exclusively  for  the 
local  market. 

The  prices  obtained  in  Chicago  and  other 
packing  centres  have  naturally  made  better 
prices  in  the  small  towns.  The  hog  crop,  too, 
has  been  another  outlet  for  the  corn  crop 
of  the  farmer  of  the  middle  West.    As  in 
the  case  of  feeding  and  finishing  cattle  for 
market,  the  cattle  raiser  can  feed  corn  to 
his  hogs  and  get  more  for  it  than  by  mar- 
keting it  as  corn;  and  a  considerable  and 
valuable  part  of  his  corn  goes  back  upon  his 
own  land,  as  I  have  elsewhere  observed. 
This  is  an  important  point  in  connection 
333 


THE   PACKERS,   THE   PRIVATE 

both  with  cattle  raising  and  hog  raising,  by 
no  means  to  be  overlooked  in  estimating 
broadly  the  benefits  brought  to  the  agricul- 
tural sections  of  the  country  by  the  meat  in- 
dustry. The  farm  of  one  crop,  or  many 
crops,  when  devoted  exclusively  to  growing 
cereals  or  cotton,  steadily  deteriorates.  The 
live  stock  farm,  whether  its  specialty  be 
cattle,  hogs  or  sheep,  improves  from  year  to 
year. 

Hog  raising,  too,  in  many  parts  of  the 
country,  particularly  in  the  Mississippi 
Valley  and  further  west,  has  been  devel- 
oped as  an  absolutely  new  crop,  a  new 
source  of  wealth  to  the  farmer.  This  has 
been  the  case  in  Illinois,  Wisconsin,  Min- 
nesota, Iowa,  Nebraska,  Kansas,  Missouri, 
in  fact  all  through  the  Mississippi  Valley. 
In  all  those  states  hog  raising  has  been 
stimulated  and  made  more  profitable,  and 
in  fact  has  been  given  an  excuse  for  exist- 
ence, by  the  establishment  of  packing  plants 
334 


CAB  LINES  AND  THE  PEOPLE 

at  Kansas  City,  St.  Joseph,  Omaha,  Sioux 
City,  South  St.  Paul,  and  Fort  Worth. 

This  phase  of  the  subject  can  be  best 
studied  right  now  in  connection  with  the 
packing  business  at  Fort  Worth,  because 
there  it  is  in  its  beginnings.  Two  large 
packing  establishments  have  been  in  oper- 
ation in  Fort  Worth  about  three  years. 
Already  their  influence  upon  the  live  stock 
interests  and  especially  hog  raising  in  that 
part  of  the  country  is  very  noticeable. 

The  Texas  hog  of  a  few  years  ago  was  a 
cousin,  as  it  were,  of  the  old-time  Texas 
long-horned  steer.  He  was  what  is  com- 
monly known  as  a  razor  back,  long  of  leg, 
fleet  of  foot,  sharp  of  nose,  and  nothing  to 
brag  about  as  a  producer  of  meat.  Within 
three  years  there  has  been  a  noticeable 
change  in  the  character  and  quality  of  the 
Texas  hog.  The  farmers  there  have  begun 
to  improve  their  breeds,  and  to  grow  for 
more  weight  and  better  quality.  They  are 
335 


THE   PACKERS,   THE   PRIVATE 

doing  it  because  the  packers  have  given 
them  a  market  at  their  very  doors. 

The  Fort  Worth  market  also  shows,  in 
plain  figures,  how  the  packing  industry, 
with  its  worldwide  effort  to  find  new  mar- 
kets, directly  promotes  the  live  stock  in- 
dustry. Every  extension  of  the  packing 
industry  makes  the  raising  of  meat  animals 
a  profitable  business  for  an  increased  num- 
ber of  American  farmers.  This  has  hap- 
pened in  the  territory  tributary  to  Fort 
Worth.  We  see  it  the  more  clearly  there 
because  that  market  is  so  new  and  is  estab- 
lished in  territory  that  has  been  the  cradle 
of  stock  raising  on  a  large  scale. 

Last  year,  with  other  markets  holding 
their  own,  the  Fort  Worth  market  showed 
a  larger  increase  in  the  actual  number  of 
cattle  handled  than  any  other  market  in  the 
country.  Its  percentage  of  increase  in  cat- 
tle receipts  was  more  than  three  times  that 
of  any  other  market.  And  the  number  of 
336 


CAR  LINES  AND  THE  PEOPLE 

hogs  received  there  was  even  higher  propor- 
tionately.   Note  these  figures: 

Receipts  of  cattle  and  calves  at  Chicago 
in  1905  were  176,000  more  than  in  1904,  an 
increase  of  about  five  per  cent.;  Kansas 
City  receipts  increased  186,000,  a  little  over 
nine  per  cent, ;  St.  Louis  increased  48,000,  a 
little  over  four  per  cent. ;  Omaha  increased 
86,000,  or  a  little  over  nine  per  cent.;  St. 
Joseph  decreased  slightly. 

Fort  Worth  receipts  of  cattle  and  calves 
increased  226,182  over  1904  receipts— a 
gain  of  more  than  thirty  per  cent. 

The  hog  showing  is  even  more  remark- 
able. At  Chicago  hog  receipts  for  1905  in- 
creased 533,189  over  1904,  a  gain  of  nearly 
seven  per  cent.;  Kansas  City  receipts  in- 
creased 976,615,  or  a  shade  under  44  per 
cent.;  Omaha  fell  off  a  trifle;  St.  Louis  in- 
creased 71,413,  about  four  per  cent.;  St. 
Joseph  increased  245,037,  or  almost  15  per 
cent. 

Fort  Worth  receipts  of  hogs  in  1905  were 
22  337 


THE   PACKERS,   THE   PRIVATE 

186,592  more  than  in  1904,  a  gain  of  more 
than  60  per  cent. 

The  striking  feature  of  these  figures  is 
that  other  markets  were  practically  holding 
their  own  while  Fort  Worth  was  making 
its  phenomenal  gain.  All  of  them,  except 
St.  Joe  in  cattle  and  Omaha  in  hogs,  made 
a  gain  in  spite  of  Fort  Worth.  The  only 
rational  explanation  of  this  is  that  a  great 
part  of  the  cattle  and  hogs  marketed  at 
Fort  Worth  represented  increased  pro- 
duction by  old  live  stock  raisers  and  abso- 
lutely new  ventures  into  the  business  by 
farmers  who  did  nothing  with  cattle  and 
hogs  until  the  Fort  Worth  market  was 
created.  In  this  respect  Fort  Worth  has 
but  repeated  the  history  of  other  markets — 
Chicago,  Kansas  City,  Omaha  and  the  rest. 

What  has  been  said  of  cattle  and  hog  rais- 
ing generally  applies  with  equal  force  to 
sheep  raising.  The  foreign  market  for 
mutton  and  mutton  products  is  not  large  as 
yet,  but  the  foreign  market  provided  for 
338 


CAR  LINES  AND  THE  PEOPLE 

beef  and  pork  gives  mutton  a  chance  in  the 
home  market.  Receipts  of  sheep  at  the 
Chicago  Union  Stock  Yards  have  been 
quadrupled  in  twenty  years — have  risen 
from  1,008,790  in  1886  to  4,736,558 
in  1905.  Receipts  of  sheep  at  Omaha 
have  been  multiplied  by  ten  within  fifteen 
years — increasing  from  170,000  in  1891  to 
more  than  1,700,000  in  1905;  at  Kansas 
City  and  St.  Louis,  during  the  same  period, 
receipts  of  sheep  have  been  more  than 
trebled.  All  this  means  that  the  in- 
come producing  power  of  the  West  has 
been  increased  just  that  much 

This  immense  increase  in  cattle  raising 
and  hog  raising,  as  I  have  outlined  it,  due 
to  the  opening  up  and  settlement  of  the 
great  West  during  the  last  quarter  of  a  cen- 
tury, would  have  been,  in  some  aspects,  a 
calamity  if  it  had  not  been  accompanied  by 
corresponding  increase  in  outlets  for  the 
product.  Consumption  of  meats  has  been 
339 


THE   PACKERS,   THE   PRIVATE 

greatly  increased  throughout  the  country 
by  the  distributing  facilities  and  the  econo- 
mies which  the  packers  have  furnished,  but 
production  has  been  far  beyond  the  con- 
suming power  of  the  United  States.  Yet, 
as  we  have  seen,  the  tremendously  increased 
production  has  been,  on  the  whole,  absorbed 
without  a  material  break  in  prices  of  the 
live  meat  animals  from  the  farm  and  range. 

What  has  made  this  increased  absorp- 
tion possible?  The  export  business; — 
nothing  but  the  export  business; — the  ex- 
port business  ivhich  the  packers  have  de- 
veloped in  the  face  of  violent  and  unreason- 
able attacks  both  at  home  and  abroad.  We 
see  this  clearly  when  we  look  at  the  export 
business  in  comparison  with  the  gross 
domestic  business  in  live  stock. 

The  live  cattle  exported,  together  with 
the  exports  of  fresh  beef  and  beef  products, 
as  shown  in  the  tables  I  have  given, 
represent  in  the  aggregate  at  least  one  mil- 
lion head  of  cattle — or  the  value  of  one  mil- 
340 


CAE  LINES  AND  THE  PEOPLE 

lion  head  annually  sent  to  foreign  markets. 
This  number  is  equal  to  one-fifth  of  the 
total  annual  slaughter  of  cattle  at  the  four 
greatest  western  markets — Chicago,  Kan- 
sas City,  South  Omaha  and  St.  Joseph. 

The  exports  of  hogs,  pork,  bacon,  hams, 
lard,  and  other  hog  products  last  year 
represented,  in  the  aggregate,  the  market 
value  of  nearly  ten  million  live  hogs  de- 
livered at  American  markets.  This  number 
of  hogs  would  be  equal  to  two-thirds  of  the 
hogs  slaughtered  at  the  four  greatest  west- 
ern markets — Chicago,  Kansas  City,  South 
Omaha  and  St.  Joseph. 

Think  of  the  effect  upon  prices  to  the 
producer  and  upon  market  conditions  gen- 
erally, if  this  immense  outlet  for  American 
farm  products  did  not  exist !  The  foreign 
markets,  opened  and  developed  by  the  un- 
aided efforts  of  the  packers,  have  taken 
care  of  this  enormous  surplus,  have  kept  the 
home  market  steady,  and  have  enabled  the 
American  farmer,  cattleman  and  hog  raiser 
341 


THE   PACKERS,   THE   PRIVATE 

to  make  a  profit  on  his  live  stock,  and  on  the 
grain  and  farm  products  he  feeds  them. 

The  export  business  in  cattle  and  meats 
and  meat  products  is  the  safety-valve  of  the 
stock  raising  and  meat  producing  industry. 
It  takes  care  of  the  surplus  from  the  farms. 
It  provides  a  market  for  grades  of  cattle 
and  beef  that  would  find  but  a  limited  mar- 
ket, or  none  at  all,  in  this  country.  It  thus 
preserves  the  balance  between  production 
and  consumption,  giving  the  American 
stock  grower  a  fair  price  for  his  product, 
and  giving  the  American  consumer  the  kind 
of  meat  he  wants  at  a  fair  price. 

But  large  as  this  export  business  is,  it 
could  be  made  much  larger,  with  corre- 
sponding increase  in  profit  to  live  stock 
raisers  and  meat  producers,  by  a  little  con- 
sistent and  co-operative  effort  in  this  coun- 
try. 

Great  Britain  is  now  our  best  customer. 
Her  markets  absorb  about  $150,000,000  a 
year  of  American  feed  lot  products.  But 
342 


CAB  LINES  AND  THE  PEOPLE 

Great  Britain  is  an  outlet  for  the  better 
grades  of  live  stock,  leaving  us  to  look  else- 
where for  a  market  for  the  commoner  qual- 
ities. 

Continental  Europe  ought  to — and  would, 
under  proper  cultivation — furnish  a  vast 
outlet  for  the  classes  of  meats  for  which 
there  is  least  demand  in  America  and  Great 
Britain.  The  masses  of  the  people  in  Con- 
tinental Europe  are  practically  without 
beef  at  all  times.  Horse  meat  is  a  recog- 
nized article  of  commerce  over  there.  They 
would  be  delighted  with  cuts  that  our  peo- 
ple pass  by.  Instead  of  the  steaks  and 
roasts  which  we  demand,  they  would  be 
pleased  with  boiling  cuts  and  corned  beef. 
As  for  other  meat  products — hams,  bacon, 
sausage,  etc. — a  market  for  literally  mil- 
lions of  American  corn-fed  hogs  would  be 
provided  in  Germany,  France  and  other 
Continental  European  countries  if  it  were 
not  for  the  restrictions  upon  imports  from 
America,  which  restrictions  are  encour- 
343 


THE   PACKERS,   THE   PRIVATE 

aged  by  the  unwarranted  attacks  by  Amer- 
icans upon  an  American  industry. 

The  possibilities  of  this  foreign  market 
are  emphasized  by  a  statement  prepared  a 
little  over  a  year  ago — and  conditions  have 
not  materially  changed  since — by  one  of  the 
most  careful  statisticians  in  the  country. 
Here  it  is: 

11  Great  Britain's  flocks  and  herds  have, 
if  anything,  gone  back,  while  the  population 
has  gone  ahead.  The  flocks  and  herds  of 
Ireland  have  virtually  been  stationary  for 
a  quarter  of  a  century.  Twenty-five  years 
ago  France  had  one  hundred  and  eighty- 
eight  head  of  live  stock  per  one  thousand 
acres  of  her  area.  She  now  has  one  hun- 
dred and  sixty-four  head,  or  a  dead  loss  of 
twenty-four  head  per  thousand  acres. 

"  Germany,  a  quarter  of  a  century  ago, 
had  three  times  as  many  sheep  per  head  of 
population  as  now.  The  Fatherland  now 
has  fewer  cattle  per  capita  than  then. 

"Holland  and  Switzerland  have  only 
344 


CAB  LINES   AND   THE  PEOPLE 

one-half  as  many  sheep  per  head  of  popu- 
lation now  as  they  had  two  and  a  half 
decades  ago,  and  Belgium  only  a  fourth  as 
many. 

"In  these  countries,  during  that  time,  the 
flocks  of  sheep  alone  have  actually  de- 
creased from  one  hundred  and  four  million 
to  seventy-five  million,  showing  an  actual 
loss  of  twenty-eight  per  cent.  At  the  same 
time  the  increase  in  the  population  was 
twenty-five  per  cent.,  thus  making  the  com- 
parative loss  much  greater. 

"The  combined  population  of  Germany, 
France,  Austria-Hungary,  Switzerland, 
Sweden,  Denmark,  Belgium  and  Holland 
twenty-five  years  ago  was  one  hundred  and 
forty  million.  This  human  family  has  now 
increased  to  one  hundred  and  seventy-five 
million  people  or  twenty-four  per  cent. 
Meantime,  the  combined  herds  of  cattle  of 
these  countries  have  only  increased  from 
forty-eight  million  to  fifty-eight  million 
head  or  about  twenty  per  cent. 
345 


THE   PACKERS,   THE   PRIVATE 

"The  relative  scarcity  of  meat  upon  the 
continent  is  readily  seen  by  the  excessively 
high  prices  paid  there  for  all  carcass  meats. 
These  prices  average  one  hundred  per  cent, 
higher  wholesale  than  similar  meats  sell  for 
in  the  United  Statesa  and  thirty  to  fifty  per 
cent,  higher  than  they  do  in  England,  even 
in  the  face  of  the  facts  that  labor  and 
other  continental  items  of  production  are 
cheaper  than  in  either  Great  Britain  or  the 
United  States. 

"The  growing  scarcity  of  the  world's 
edible  meats  is  produced  by  the  two  causes 
previously  given :  the  faster  increase  of  the 
human  race  in  proportion  to  the  increase  of 
abattoir  animals,  and  the  improved  condi- 
tion of  the  working  classes,  which  causes  a 
greater  per  capita  consumption  of  meats 
than  existed  two  decades  ago. 

1 '  The  per  capita  consumption  of  meats  in 

the    United    States    has    increased    fully 

twenty-five  per  cent,  during  the  last  fifteen 

years.     In   Great   Britain   it  has  nearly 

346 


CAB  LINES  AND  THE  PEOPLE 

doubled  in  the  same  time.  On  the  continent, 
the  demand,  as  measured  by  the  very  high 
local  price  of  meats,  has  largely  increased, 
but  the  increased  consumption  has  been  lim- 
ited by  the  virtual  exclusion  of  foreign 
meats  and  the  insufficiency  of  domestic 
herds  to  supply  the  local  demands.  With 
improved  industrial  conditions  and  continu- 
ing high  tariffs  or  other  means  for  ex- 
cluding the  surplus  of  other  countries,  the 
masses  of  the  continental  nations  must  de- 
sist from  meat  eating  or  pay  exorbitant 
prices  for  this  essential  staff  of  life." 

The  restrictions  which  hold  back  Amer- 
icans from  supplying  this  tremendous  po- 
tential market  in  Continental  Europe  are 
of  various  kinds— tariffs,  restrictive  regu- 
lations as  to  the  form  in  which  meats  shall 
be  shipped,  unreasonable  regulations  as  to 
inspection,  and  absolute  prohibition.  The 
tariffs,  in  addition  to  their  revenue  pur- 
pose, are  frankly  intended  to  restrict  meat 
importations  so  as  to  give  the  home  grower 
347 


THE   PACKERS,   THE   PRIVATE 

a  higher  priced  market.  Regulations  as  to 
form  in  which  meats  may  be  imported,  and 
as  to  inspection,  in  many  instances,  would 
seem  to  be  devised,  when  we  come  to  ana- 
lyze them,  for  a  similar  purpose  of  exclu- 
sion, although  their  ostensible  purpose  is 
to  protect  public  health.  The  foreign  poli- 
ticians find  in  the  unwarranted  attacks  by 
Americans  upon  the  packing  industry  an 
excuse  for  maintaining  these  restrictions. 

We  find  in  Germany  a  concrete  example 
of  the  way  hostile  foreign  legislation,  en- 
couraged by  the  anti-packer  ''bushwhack- 
ing" in  America,  operates  against  increase 
in  our  exports  of  meat  animals,  meats  and 
packing  house  products.  In  1904  (the  last 
year  for  which  I  have  official  figures)  Ger- 
many imported  three  hundred  and  twenty- 
one  thousand,  eight  hundred  and  seventy- 
nine  cattle  worth  $26,796,700,  mostly  from 
Austria-Hungary,  Denmark  and  Switzer- 
land, less  than  one-half  of  one  per  cent, 
coming  from  other  countries.  During  the 
348 


CAR  LINES  AND  THE  PEOPLE 

same  year  we  sold  Great  Britain  four  hun- 
dred and  one  thousand,  two  hundred  and 
forty-five  cattle  worth  $34,844,378. 

Given  a  fair  opportunity,  there  is  no  rea- 
son why  we  should  not  be  able  to  sell  Ger- 
many a  large  proportion  of  the  more  than 
three  hundred  thousand  head  she  imports 
annually  on  the  hoof,  to  say  nothing  of  the 
immense  quantity  of  pickled  and  canned 
meats  her  people  would  consume— would 
be  glad  to  get— if  given  a  chance.    Persons 
conversant  with  German  conditions  and  re- 
quirements at  first  hand  estimate  that  we 
ought  to  be  able  to  sell  Germany  two  thou- 
sand five  hundred  to  three  thousand  five 
hundred  live  cattle  every  week  if  given 
entrance    to    her    markets.      When    Ger- 
many practically  stopped  taking  American 
canned  meats  at  the  close  of  1900,  her  an- 
nual imports  of  those  goods  represented 
one  hundred  thousand  cattle  a  year,  about 
two  thousand  head  a  week. 

An  important  point  to  be  considered  in 
349 


THE   PACKEES,   THE   PRIVATE 

this  connection  is  that  the  German  mar- 
ket would  absorb  the  grade  denominated 
"range  cattle,"  for  which  there  is  but  a 
limited  demand  at  home  and  in  England. 

Now  for  a  closer  examination  of  the  re- 
strictive regulations  upon  imports  of  Amer- 
ican meats  into  European  countries  (taking 
Germany  as  an  example)  and  the  influence 
of  our  American  critics  upon  those  regula- 
tions. Practically  all  of  the  German  states 
prohibit  importation  of  live  cattle  from 
America.  Those  ostensibly  permitting  it 
surround  importations  with  quarantine 
and  inspection  regulations  (each  one  with  a 
fee  attached)  that  are  as  effective  in  bar- 
ring cattle  as  flat  prohibition  would  be. 

The  ostensible  reason  for  these  regula- 
tions is  to  protect  German  cattle  against 
infection  from  diseased  American  cattle. 
As  a  matter  of  fact,  American  cattle  are 
far  freer  from  disease  than  are  German 
cattle  or  the  cattle  of  any  country  from 
which  Germany  draws  its  supply.  Amer- 
350 


CAR  LINES  AND  THE  PEOPLE 

lean  cattle  are  better  cared  for  than  are 
European  cattle;  they  have  more  room; 
they  run  out  of  doors  on  ranges  and  pas- 
tures of  considerable  size,  instead  of  being 
confined  to  restricted  quarters  as  so  many 
European  cattle  are. 

Most  of  what  little  cattle  disease  we  have 
comes  to  us  from  Europe.  Take  the  much 
talked  of  tuberculosis  for  example.  Offi- 
cial reports  of  United  States  inspection  at 
the  big  packing  centres  show  that  only 
about  one  per  cent,  of  American  beef  cattle 
are  infected,  and  these  are  condemned. 
Figures  from  across  the  ocean  indicate  that 
about  thirty  per  cent,  have  tuberculosis.  So 
it  cannot  be  that  fear  of  disease  is  all  the 
reason  for  keeping  American  cattle  out  of 
Germany.  But  that  is  a  good  excuse;  and 
every  time  one  of  our  "yellow"  American 
writers  runs  amuck  in  a  spasm  of  "seeing 
things"  the  German  politician  gets  another 
bit  of  assistance  toward  keeping  up  the 
bars  against  American  cattle. 
351 


THE   PACKERS,    THE   PRIVATE 

American  fresh  meats  are  nominally  ad- 
mitted to  German  ports;  actually  they  are 
as  effectually  barred  out  as  if  prohibited. 
German  laws  provide  that  fresh  beef  or 
pork  cannot  be  imported  in  " quarters"  or 
1  'cuts"  but  must  come  in  entire  carcasses 
with  all  or  part  of  the  head  and  practically 
all  of  the  internal  organs  naturally  at- 
tached to  the  carcass.  It  is  impracticable 
to  ship  meats  in  this  form. 

Since  1900  American  canned  meats  and 
sausages  have  been  barred  absolutely  from 
Germany.  There  is  no  exception.  '  *  Yellow ' ' 
imaginings  of  the  dark  secrets  of  packing 
houses  help  to  retain  the  prohibition.  Yet 
Germany  takes  our  barreled  beef — a  quan- 
tity of  it  that  represents  more  than  fifty 
thousand  cattle  a  year.  There  is  no  reason 
why  she  should  take  this  and  reject  other 
meats,  except  that  she  must  have  it,  and 
has  not  as  yet  been  able  to  get  elsewhere  a 
sufficient  quantity  of  the  right  quality.  And 
it  is  a  fact  that  the  German  government  lias 
352 


CAR  LINES  AND  THE  PEOPLE 

bought  largely  of  American  canned  meats 
for  the  Imperial  navy  and  the  commercial 
marine  service  at  a  time  when  importation 
of  these  goods  for  general  sale  was  pro- 
hibited. 

What  I  have  said  of  Germany  applies 
more  or  less  to  France  and  other  countries 
of  Continental  Europe  where  we  ought  to 
have  a  better  market  for  the  products 
of  American  farms.  The  discrimination 
against  American  meats,  encouraged  by  the 
unjustifiable  utterances  of  irresponsible 
Americans,  has  already  been  felt.  For  not 
feeling  it  more  seriously  as  yet  we  have  to 
thank  a  series  of  unusual  conditions 
throughout  the  world  during  the  last  half 
dozen  years. 

The  Boer  war,  the  Boxer  troubles  in 
China,  the  Russo-Japanese  war,  the  mili- 
tary and  naval  precautions  arising  from 
"wars  and  rumors  of  wars"  elsewhere, 
have  served  to  keep  up  a  market  for  the 
"range"  cattle  that  we  should  be  selling 
23  353 


THE   PACKERS,   THE   PRIVATE 

in  Continental  Europe.  But  we  cannot  de- 
pend upon  these  extraordinary  conditions 
all  the  time.  When  the  market  drop  comes, 
it  will  fall  heaviest  on  the  American  farmer 
and  live  stock  raiser. 

American  encouragement  of  this  Euro- 
pean discrimination  is  the  more  dangerous 
to  American  industry  because  of  the  rising 
importance  of  the  Argentine  Republic  as  a 
cattle  and  meat  producing  country.  On  this 
point  let  me  quote  one  of  the  most  prom- 
inent live  stock  men  in  the  West,  W.  A. 
Harris,  former  United  States  Senator  from 
Kansas.  In  a  public  address  last  December 
(1905)  on  ways  and  means  of  extending  our 
markets  in  Europe,  he  had  this  to  say  of 
Argentine 's  competition : 

' '  Now  one  idea  that  has  been  in  the  minds 
of  a  great  many  of  our  public  men  for  a 
great  many  years  is  that  they — Continental 
Europeans — have  got  to  buy  their  bread 
and  meat  of  us,  and  you  cannot  starve  a 
nation — they  will  buy  anyhow.  This  is  no 
354 


CAE  LINES  AND  THE  PEOPLE 

longer  true.  The  world  has  moved  on.  To- 
day the  Argentine  Bepublic  is  the  strongest 
and  most  dangerous  competitor  that  we 
have  found  for  the  trade  with  Great 
Britain,  and  they  are  crowding  us  closely. 
It  is  the  greatest  natural  cattle  country  that 
the  world  ever  knew.  It  is  the  state  of  Illi- 
nois multiplied  by  one  hundred,  when  you 
come  to  consider  it.  In  the  northern  part 
of  the  country  you  can  grow  figs  and 
oranges  easily  in  the  open  air,  and  it  ex- 
tends in  an  unbroken  plain  to  the  south  for 
two  thousand  five  hundred  miles,  and  it  is 
all  rich  prairie  land  practically. 

"They  are  spending  more  money,  and 
have  been  in  the  last  ten  years,  than  any 
other  people  on  earth  in  order  to  improve 
their  stock  of  cattle.  They  are  lavishing 
fortunes  upon  the  best  bulls  and  cattle  that 
Great  Britain  can  produce,  and  they  are 
able  to  raise  cattle  that  would  astonish  the 
American  citizen.  They  also  have  enormous 
sheep  interests. 

355 


THE   PACKEES,   THE  PRIVATE 

"They  have  learned  how  to  ship  dressed 
beef.  For  a  while  we  rested  secure  in  the 
idea  that  they  had  to  pass  through  the  trop- 
ics to  reach  the  continental  market,  and 
that  they  could  not  ship  dressed  beef  in  the 
chilled  condition  that  was  required;  and 
that  was  a  great  difficulty  for  a  while.  But 
they  came  to  Chicago  and  took  down  the 
best  experts  they  could  get  in  that  line  of 
business,  and  they  have  built  up  packing 
houses  there  that  now  send  dressed  beef 
and  mutton  to  Liverpool,  and  they  are  cut- 
ting our  throats  in  the  English  market,  to 
say  nothing  of  the  continental  markets." 

Now  I  do  not  desire  to  be  misunderstood 
as  contending  that  all  restrictions  and  dis- 
criminations laid  upon  American  meats  in 
Germany  and  other  European  countries 
are  due  entirely  to  American  attacks  upon 
the  packing  industry.  The  primary  influ- 
ence at  work  in  Germany  against  American 
imports  is  the  agrarian  influence  seeking 
to  make  higher  prices  for  German  farm 
356 


CAE  LINES  AND  THE   PEOPLE 

products.  But  I  do  contend  that  every 
time  a  "yellow"  writer  for  "yellow" 
American  magazines  and  publishing  houses 
makes  assertions  such  as  have  recently  been 
made — assertions  which  cannot  be  justified 
either  as  fact  or  as  clean  fiction — he  does 
his  utmost  to  bring  about  conditions  that 
will  be  disastrous  to  the  American  stock 
raiser  and  farmer,  and  to  every  person  who 
participates  in  the  great  live  stock  and 
meat  producing  industries  of  the  United 
States. 


357 


THE   PACKERS,   THE   PRIVATE 
CHAPTER  XV 

AS  TO  CLEANLINESS  AND  SANITATION 

THERE  has  been  so  much  said  lately 
about  the  lack  of  care  for  cleanli- 
ness in  packing  house  processes,  and 
about  the  wholesomeness  of  the  meats  and 
food  products  that  come  through  the  pack- 
ing houses,  that  I  feel  constrained  to  add 
something   to   what  I   have   already   said 
about  the  way  the  public  health  is  safe- 
guarded from  the  time  a  meat  animal  comes 
to  the  stock  yards  until  it  leaves  the  packing 
house  as  a  finished  product.    At  every  step 
in  the  conversion  of  animals  into  meat  the 
public  is  protected,  not  only  by  rigid  gov- 
ernment inspection  of  every  animal  before 
slaughter  and  of  every  carcass  after  slaugh- 
ter, but  also  by  the  common-sense  business 
methods  of  the  packers  themselves. 
Writers  and  publishers  who  have  only 
358 


CAR  LINES  AND   THE  PEOPLE 

the  dollars-and-cents  purpose  to  serve  as- 
sume the  tragic  pose  and  unfold  hair-rais- 
ing tales  about  dark  secrets  of  the  packing 
industry.  They  make  statements  that 
should,  if  they  were  true,  cause  every  pack- 
ing house  in  America  to  be  closed  by  law, 
and  should  convert  the  whole  world  to  veg- 
etarianism. 

We  are  told  of  hidden  chambers  and 
mysterious  cellars  where  nameless  mate- 
rials are  worked  up  by  secret  processes  into 
food.  We  are  told,  with  a  gravity  that  is 
intended  to  pass  for  sincerity,  that  "out- 
siders" are  never  permitted  to  see  the  inner 
workings  of  a  packing  house.  These  liter- 
ary concoctions  are  served  up  with  a  gar- 
nishment of  all  the  circumstantial  detail 
that  can  be  conceived  by  a  dishonest  mind 
and  a  feverish  imagination  working  to- 
gether. The  very  excess  of  detail,  to  the 
thinking  mind,  ought  to  be  evidence  of  un- 
truth. 

Are   these    dispensers    of    "literature" 
359 


THE   PACKERS,   THE   PRIVATE 

supernaturally  gifted  that  they  can  dis- 
cover in  a  flash  the  dark  secrets  so  care- 
fully hidden  from  all  "outsiders"  and 
never  suspected  by  the  thousands  of  pack- 
ing house  employees  and  hundreds  of  thou- 
sands of  packing  house  visitors?  People 
who  would  be  highly  indignant  if  one  were 
to  question  their  intelligence,  accept  these 
false  reports  because  it  is  so  much  easier  to 
believe  what  we  are  told  than  it  is  to  investi- 
gate, to  analyze  and  to  think  for  ourselves. 

If  one  were  possessed  of  a  mind  entirely 
philosophical  and  removed  utterly  from 
personal  interest  in  the  question,  he  might 
find  amusement  in  observing  this  whole 
performance  of  baiting  the  imaginary 
"beef  trust"  as  another  manifestation  of 
the  mud  throwing  instinct  that  has  been 
characteristic  of  some  human  natures 
throughout  the  ages  since  time  began.  Un- 
fortunately there  is  a  serious  side,  a  very 
serious  side,  to  this  performance.  It  does 
360 


CAB  LINES  AND   THE  PEOPLE 

real  harm,  not  only  to  the  packer,  but  prac- 
tically to  the  entire  public. 

It  is  a  foul  blow  at  the  entire  industry 
of  raising  meat  animals  and  distributing 
meats  and  meat  products,  an  industry 
that  permeates  every  section  of  this  coun- 
try and  engages,  in  one  form  or  another, 
from  farm  to  retail  meat  shop,  the  income 
producing  work  of  a  very  large  percentage 
of  the  population — a  larger  percentage 
probably  than  does  any  other  industry  in 
the  land.  It  is  an  injustice  to  every  man, 
woman  or  child  who  eats  meat,  because, 
utterly  without  justification,  it  plants  in 
their  minds  a  suspicion  of  the  wholesome- 
ness  of  their  daily  food. 

The  packers  have  nothing  to  hide.  They 
hide  nothing.  The  public  knows  this  if  it 
would  but  let  itself  remember  facts.  You 
who  read  these  lines  know  it,  if  you  will  but 
forget  for  a  moment  the  clamor  of  sensa- 
tion-mongers-for-profit  only.  Have  you 
ever  heard  of  anybody  being  denied  admis- 
361 


sion  to  one  of  the  large  packing  houses  in 
Chicago !  Have  you  ever  heard  of  anybody 
being  restricted  in  packing  house  sight- 
seeing to  any  particular  hour  of  the  day  or 
day  of  the  week! 

The  doors  of  the  large  packing  houses 
stand  wide  open  to  the  world.  There  is  not 
another  industry  in  this  country  that  goes 
farther  in  admitting  the  public  to  its  work- 
rooms. Certainly  no  other  industry,  en- 
gaged in  the  production  of  food,  more 
frankly  invites  visit  and  inspection  by 
everybody  that  is  minded  "to  see  how  it  is 
done. ' ' 

For  more  than  a  quarter  of  a  century 
the  Union  Stock  Yards  and  the  packing 
houses  have  constituted  the  greatest  show 
places  in  Chicago.  It  is  safe  to  say  that 
practically  everybody  coming  to  Chicago  in 
that  time — from  other  cities,  from  villages, 
from  farms,  from  all  over  the  world — has 
had  it  in  mind  to  visit  the  stock  yards  and 
the  packing  houses.  Most  of  them  have 
362 


CAR  LINES  AND   THE  PEOPLE 

done  so.  Not  a  day  passes  that  we  do  not 
have  them  by  scores ;  at  times  they  come  by 
thousands.  Literally  hundreds  of  thou- 
sands of  people — I  could,  I  believe,  say  mil- 
lions, in  truth — all  meat  eaters,  have  gone 
through  these  plants  and  have  seen  every 
process  of  converting  animals  into  food. 

Outside  of  the  offices  there  is  not  a  locked 
door  in  Chicago's  Packing  Town.  Could 
the  packers  afford  to  throw  their  plants 
open  to  the  world  in  this  way  if  they  had 
anything  to  conceal?  Could  they  risk  giv- 
ing a  bad  impression  of  packing  house  pro- 
cesses and  methods  to  hundreds  of  thou- 
sands of  actual  customers  for  their  prod- 
uct? On  the  contrary,  they  have  pursued 
the  open  house  policy  as  good  business  pol- 
icy. They  have  believed  and  have  proved 
that  the  more  the  public  knows  about  the 
inside  of  a  modern  packing  house  the  less 
prejudice  there  will  be  against  packing 
house  food  products. 

But  these  facts,  which  the  whole  world 
363 


THE    PACKERS,   THE   PRIVATE 

knows  when  it  stops  to  think  about  them, 
have  no  restraining  influence  on  the  makers 
of  ''yellow"  literature.  In  fact,  some  of 
them,  I  believe,  attempt  to  justify  their  dis- 
regard for  facts  by  holding  to  an  academic 
theory  to  the  effect  that  there  is  nothing  in 
common  between  facts  and  truth;  that 
truth,  in  other  words,  consists  not  in  the 
literal  fact  of  a  statement,  but  in  what  the 
people  are  ready  to  believe  and  will  believe. 

Unfortunately  a  good  many  people  will 
always  believe  anything  that  is  persistently 
told  them,  particularly  if  it  be  about  a  cor- 
poration. 

The  business  of  slaughtering  meat  ani- 
mals and  converting  them  into  food  and 
food  products  is  not  a  parlor  business  at 
its  best.  Yet  we  hear  every  day,  from  the 
thousands  of  people  who  visit  the  packing 
houses  as  sightseers,  expressions  of  sur- 
prise that  the  various  processes  of  the  busi- 
ness are  carried  on  in  such  a  cleanly  man- 
364 


CAB  LINES  AND  THE  PEOPLE 

ner  and  with  so  little  admixture  of  the  un- 
appetizing. 

Men  who  are  familiar  with  the  old-fash- 
ioned ways  of  slaughtering  and  handling 
animals,  or  men  who  remember  the  stock 
yards  and  packing  houses  of  ten  or  fifteen 
years  ago,  would  be  amazed  to  see  what  has 
been  done  since  then  in  the  way  of  install- 
ing improved  methods.  The  difference  be- 
tween the  old  and  the  new,  and  the  rapidity 
with  which  changes  from  the  old  to  the  new 
have  had  to  be  made,  is  often  forgotten  by 
supersensitive  persons  to  whom  the  sight 
of  raw  meat  is  not  pleasing. 

This  packing  industry,  as  we  know  it  to- 
day, is  only  about  thirty  years  old.  The 
packing  house  of  thirty  years  ago  was  not 
much  more  than  an  old-fashioned  country 
slaughter  house  multiplied  in  size;  the 
appliances  and  methods  of  handling  were 
crude.  The  business  has  grown  since  then 
with  marvelous  rapidity.  It  has  been  a  tre- 
mendous task  for  the  packers  to  keep  up 
365 


THE    PACKERS,    THE    PRIVATE 

with  the  demands  upon  them  for  providing 
sufficient  buildings  and  equipment  of  the 
right  character.  But  they  have  kept  up. 
The  packing  houses  of  this  country  will 
compare  favorably  with  any  of  the  places 
where  foodstuffs  are  handled.  Even  the 
out-of-door  work  that  begins  the  moment 
the  cattle  are  landed  at  the  yards  in  rail- 
road trains  has  received  its  share  of  atten- 
tion from  the  side  of  sanitation. 

The  old  stock  yards,  opened  in  1865,  were 
not  much  more  than  a  series  of  cattle  pens 
that  could  have  been  constructed  almost 
any  place  on  the  prairie  with  posts  and 
fence  boards.  For  many  years  they  con- 
tinued to  be  inadequately  drained  and 
poorly  paved.  The  alleys  and  pens  were 
floored  over  with  planks.  There  was  a  pre- 
tense at  draining  by  means  of  box  sewers, 
but  that  was  all. 

During  the  last  half  dozen  years  the 
facilities  for  handling  cattle  have  under- 
gone what  amounts  to  a  revolution.  The 
366 


CAE  LINES  AND  THE  PEOPLE 

yards  have  been  almost  entirely  recon- 
structed. Alleys  and  pens  that  were  floored 
with  planks  have  been  torn  up,  and  the 
area  devoted  to  the  yarding  of  cattle — 
almost  500  acres — has  been  paved  through- 
out with  vitrified  brick  laid  on  a  substantial 
foundation.  The  old  sewerage  system  has 
given  place  to  a  new,  complete,  up-to-date 
system.  The  sanitary  condition  of  the 
yards,  consequently,  is  now  pronounced  to 
be  practically  perfect. 

The  reconstruction  of  packing  houses  has 
been  going  on  in  the  same  way.  New  build- 
ings are  taking  the  place  of  the  old  just  as 
rapidly  as  they  can  be  constructed.  In 
putting  up  the  new  buildings  the  very  best 
modern  methods  of  construction  and  finish 
are  adopted  throughout.  The  use  of  wood 
or  other  previous  material  is  dispensed 
with  as  far  as  possible.  Electrical  motive 
power  has  practically  supplanted  other 
forms  of  power,  which  make  it  possible  to 
run  the  machinery  of  a  plant  from  a  cen- 
367 


THE   PACKERS,   THE   PRIVATE 

tral  station,  where  all  the  labor  and  dust- 
making  and  smoke-making  processes  can 
be  concentrated  and  controlled,  instead  of 
being  distributed  throughout  many  build- 
ings. 

Criticism  of  the  large  packing  houses,  on 
the  score  of  cleanliness  and  sanitation, 
springs  largely  from  persons  who  are  en- 
tirely irresponsible,  and  who  like  the  ''yel- 
low" periodicals,  have  something  to  gain 
by  attracting  attention  to  their  sensation- 
alism. To  give  the  slightest  semblance  of 
plausibility  to  their  utterances,  they  are 
forced  to  ignore  the  rigid  government  in- 
spection that  is  enforced  in  every  large 
packing  house,  and  to  picture  the  packers 
as  men  who  utterly  lack  ordinary  business 
sense. 

I  feel  safe  in  asserting  that  meats  and 
food  products,  generally  speaking,  are 
handled  as  carefully  and  circumspectly  in 
the  large  packing  houses  as  they  are  in  the 
average  home  kitchen.  Put  it  on  the  basis 
368 


CAR  LINES  AND   THE   PEOPLE 

of  selfishness,  if  you  please,  and  deny  the 
packers  a  worthy  motive,  and  the  statement 
I  have  made  is  still  sound. 

It  is  good  business  for  the  packer  to  be 
careful.  There  is  a  positive  dollar-and- 
cents  benefit  to  him  in  being  able  to  assert 
that  his  output  is  above  reproach.  He  could 
not  afford  to  assert  this  if  it  were  not 
true.  He  would  be  soon  found  out,  and  the 
damage  he  would  suffer  from  exposure 
would  overwhelm  any  little  momentary 
profit  he  might  have  reaped  as  the  fruit  of 
his  misrepresentations. 

Armour  &  Co.,  and  I  think  most  large 
packers,  maintain  a  force  of  scientific  men 
who  are  engaged  in  original  research  and 
experiment.  An  important  part  of  the 
duty  of  these  experts  is  to  determine  by 
frequent  test  that  every  process  employed 
in  producing  articles  of  food  shall,  first  of 
all,  safeguard  the  wholesomeness  of  the 
article  so  produced. 

Every  detail  in  the  handling  of  meats 
24  369 


THE   PACKERS,    THE   PRIVATE 

that  go  into  packing  house  food  products 
is  closely  watched  by  trained  superintend- 
ents and  foremen,  who  are  under  strict 
instructions  to  prevent  the  slightest  care- 
lessness or  the  doing  of  anything  to  which 
exception  might  be  taken.  Scrupulous 
cleanliness  is  ordered  and  enforced.  If 
this  were  not  so,  we  would  hardly  throw 
open  the  doors  of  our  plants,  as  we  are 
doing,  to  visitors  who  have  a  curiosity  to 
know  what  goes  on  inside  a  packing  house. 
The  tendency  of  packing  house  manage- 
ment is  all  in  the  direction  of  securing  as 
rapidly  as  possible  the  best  possible  condi- 
tions surrounding  the  workers  and  the  ma- 
terials they  handle. 

It  is  rather  late  in  the  day,  if  you  but 
think  for  a  moment,  to  commence  believing 
that  canned  meats  and  other  packing  house 
products  are  unwholesome.  The  West,  the 
Northwest,  Alaska,  even  the  uttermost 
parts  of  the  earth,  have  been  explored  and 
opened  to  civilization  on  Chicago  canned 
370 


CAR  LINES  AND   THE  PEOPLE 

meats.  The  western  ranch  and  mining 
camp  could  not  exist  without  Chicago 
canned  meats.  The  basis  of  every  expe- 
dition to  find  the  north  pole  is  Chicago 
canned  meats.  For  a  quarter  of  a  century 
naval  and  military  expeditions  have  been 
organized  on  Chicago  canned  meats.  The 
wars  of  the  world — in  the  Soudan,  in  South 
Africa,  in  China  and  in  Manchuria — have 
been  fought  on  Chicago  canned  meats. 

The  self-appointed  saviors  of  the  uni- 
verse (at  so  much  a  line)  sometimes  point 
to  German  restrictions  on  meat  imports 
from  America  as  evidence  in  support  of 
their  assertions  against  packing  house 
methods.  This  is  another  of  their  half 
truths.  German  restrictions  on  American 
meats  are  purely  protective  in  deference  to 
the  agrarian  influence  in  that  nation.  It  has 
happened,  too,  that  when  German  laws 
were  barring  American  meats  from  Ger- 
man ports,  the  commissary  department  of 
the  German  Navy  was  buying  American 
371 


THE   PACKERS,    THE    PRIVATE 

canned  meats  to  provision  his  Imperial 
Majesty's  battleships. 

The  question  of  wholesomeness  and 
healthfulness  is  only  part  of  the  broader 
question — "quality.'*  The  large  packers 
have  grown  and  prospered  beyond  their 
smaller  competitors  not  only  because  they 
have  handled  the  business  better  and  more 
economically,  but  because  their  methods  of 
handling,  and  the  stimulation  given  to  the 
cattle  industry  by  their  facilities,  has  en- 
abled the  public  to  get  a  better  quality  of 
meat  at  the  same,  or  a  less,  price  than  was 
previously  paid.  This  has  been  one  of  the 
results,  as  stated  elsewhere,  of  the  coming 
of  the  packers,  which  changed  raising  and 
marketing  of  cattle  from  an  adventure  to  a 
business  and  made  cattle  raising  for  qual- 
ity profitable. 

Packers  are  not  claiming  any  particular 

virtue  in  this.    They  have  done  what  they 

have  done  to  serve  their  own  purposes.  But 

certainly  the  doing  of  it  has  not  been  a  vice. 

372 


CAR  LINES  AND  THE  PEOPLE 

It  has  been  part  of  the  evolution  of  the  busi- 
ness of  the  country.  Just  as  in  the  trans- 
portation business  the  big  railroads  furnish 
better  transportation  facilities  than  the  lit- 
tle jerk-water  local  line,  so  the  large  pack- 
ers are  able  to  furnish  the  public  better 
meat,  and  furnish  it  regularly. 

This  whole  question  as  to  better  prices  to 
the  cattleman,  and  better  quality  to  the 
public,  has  been  ably  discussed  in  an  article 
on  " Butchers  Then  and  Now,"  published 
in  the  January  1st,  1906,  business  review 
number  of  the  Daily  Live  Stock  Reporter, 
of  Fort  Worth,  Texas,  from  which  the  fol- 
lowing extracts  are  taken.  I  quote  this,  be- 
cause live  stock  papers  are  published  for, 
and  in  the  interest  of,  cattle  sellers  instead 
of  cattle  buyers  like  the  packers : 

"Up  to  fifteen  years  ago  the  only  grad- 
ing of  cattle  was  by  three — a  cow,  a  steer, 
and  a  calf;  and  they  were  in  two  classes — 
poor  and  fat.  They  were  almost  without 
exception  the  'scrub  or  long-horns.'  It  is 
373 


THE   PACKERS,   THE  PRIVATE 

an  exception  to-day  to  find  a  long-horn. 
They  sold  then  at  from  $3.00  to  $8.00  per 
head,  depending  on  who  wanted  a  few  head, 
and  for  what  purpose.  They  were  bought 
in  job  lots  and  by  herds.  Now  they  sell  for 
from  $9.00  to  $60.00,  single  and  by  car-loads, 
at  an  established  market  whose  prices  are 
as  stable  as  any  other  market,  giving  the 
producer  or  trader  a  fixed  basis  on  which 
to  operate. 

"The  NOW  steer  (in  Texas)  is  fattened 
mainly  on  cottonseed  hulls  and  meal,  com- 
modities unknown  and  thrown  away  until 
the  packing  house  industry  created  a  de- 
mand for  bigger,  fatter  and  finer  meat.  The 
NOW  steer,  under  these  conditions,  weighs 
one  thousand  to  one  thousand  two  hundred 
pounds,  while  a  little  grasser  THEN  steer 
weighed  six  hundred  and  fifty  to  nine  hun- 
dred pounds ;  and  there  is  a  large  difference 
in  the  price  per  pound  of  the  NOW  steer, 
though  no  more  time  is  required  to  produce 
him,  but  some  more  expense  for  seed  and 
374 


CAB  LINES  AND  THE  PEOPLE 

meal.  The  condition  of  better  and  finer 
cattle  is  seen  in  every  ranch  and  nearly 
every  farm  in  Texas  as  a  direct  effort  of 
the  packing  houses 

" Let's  look  at  the  butchering  fifteen  to 
twenty  years  ago  in  Texas;  not  the  person, 
but  the  killing  and  the  serving  to  the  trade 
of  our  beef  meat.  It  used  to  be  that  our 
town  butcher,  like  other  village  butchers, 
scouted  around  among  his  neighbors  and 
the  nearby  farms  for  a  beef  or  beeves,  just 
as  he  would  need.  A  fat  one  was  selected 
if  it  was  on  his  beat,  and,  if  not,  the  next 
thing  to  a  fat  one  was  taken. 

"Having  received  his  'beef  the  next 
thing  was  to  drive  it  to  a  convenient  tree 
that  afforded  a  branch  large  enough  to 
'hoist'  the  carcass  by  means  of  a  rude 
pulley  carried  along  in  his  wagon,  to  haul 
it  up  high  enough  to  receive  a  few  buckets 
of  water  as  a  washing  for  the  meat  before 
starting  to  the  shop.  If  the  tree  was  not 
there  it  was  handled  on  the  ground,  after 
375 


THE   PACKERS,   THE   PRIVATE 

which  it  was  bundled  into  a  wagon  and 
off  for  the  block.  If  it  was  winter  and  very 
cold  weather,  the  meat  might  cool  a  little 
en  route.  One  to  three  hours  after  being 
killed  it  was  at  its  dissecting  quarters — on 
the  block — and  being  served  out  as  tender- 
loins, short  rib  roasts,  'chuck'  and  round 
steak — nice  and  warm  and  beautifully  red 
with  gore  partially  congealed. 

"The  old-time  butcher  was  unmolested 
or  bothered  by  such  pesky  things  as  inspec- 
tors, either  local,  state  or  national.  His  in- 
tentions were  good  and  honest,  but  fre- 
quently he  did  not  know  whether  the  beef 
was  healthy  or  diseased,  whether  tubercu- 
losis or  some  other  'losis'  was  permeat- 
ing the  meat — in  fact,  he  was  not  posted  and 
there  was  no  one  to  post  him. 

"The  quality  or  condition  of  the  meat 
when  it  reaches  the  consumer  depends 
largely  upon  its  treatment  after  being 
dressed,  and  it  is  here  that  one  of  the  great- 
est advantages  of  the  present  over  the  old 
376 


way  of  butchering  is  found.    In  the  old  way 
of  butchering  and  slaughtering  meats,  the 
butcher  had  no,  or  at  best  a  primitive,  way 
of  chilling  or  refrigerating  meats.    In  the 
early  days  of  the  beef  packing  industry  the 
entire  product  was  salted.    How  different 
do  we  find  things  now.     The  present  refrig- 
erating system  of  a  large  packing  plant  is 
on  a  very  extensive  scale.    If  it  is  intended 
to  keep  meats  for  a  period  of  several  weeks 
or  months,  the  meat  is  frozen,  and  so  per- 
fect are  the  packer's  facilities  that  frozen 
meat  can  be  kept  in  that  condition  almost 
indefinitely.  It  is  not  often  found  necessary, 
however,  to  keep  fresh  meats  for  a  very 
long  period,  and,  in  fact,  meat  is  said  to  be 
in  the  best  condition  after  being  chilled  for 
ten  days  or  two  weeks,  though  it  will  re- 
main good,  in  a  temperature  just  above 

freezing,  for  three  weeks  or  longer 

"The  great  American  public  does  not 
know  the  care  and  caution  which  is  neces- 
sary to  prevent  the  direct  transmission  to 
377 


man  of  disease  common  to  animals,  or  to 
prevent  the  setting  up  of  diseased  condi- 
tions in  man  from  the  consumption  of 
meats  from  unhealthy  animals. 

"Most  of  the  animals  that  are  slaugh- 
tered by  butchers  in  country  towns,  or  such 
of  the  business  as  is  carried  on  by  retail 
meat  dealers  in  the  larger  towns  and  cities 
who  slaughter  their  own  meat,  are  put  on 
the  block  and  sold  to  the  consumer  without 
having  been  inspected  by  government  or 
other  supervisors,  and  no  doubt  in  a  great 
many  cases  by  men  who  have  little  or  no 
concern  whether  the  food  derived  from 
such  animals  is  fit  for  consumption. 

"Instances  have  even  been  known  where 
animals  known  to  be  diseased  have  been 
purchased  by  unscrupulous  dealers,  simply 
because  their  condition  permitted  of  their 
purchase  at  a  very  low  figure,  and  the  meat 
from  such  animals  has  been  sold  to  the  con- 
sumer at  prices  on  a  basis  with  those  paid 
for  wholesome  meat.  The  killer  ha*s  reaped 
378 


CAR  LINES  AND   THE  PEOPLE 

a  rich  reward  by  his  unscrupulous  methods, 
while  the  public  has  paid  dearly  in  the  loss 
of  health  and  even  life.  Small  butchering 
establishments  by  the  hundreds  are  still 
slaughtering  disease  infected  cattle  and 
selling  the  meat  to  the  public  for  food.  It 
would  obviously  be  impossible  to  control 
the  slaughter  of  every  animal  killed 
throughout  the  country. 

"But  the  advent  of  the  packers  and  the 
centering  of  the  great  bulk  of  the  slaugh- 
tering at  a  few  points  has  made  it  possible 
to  minimize  the  dangers  which  may  arise 
from  consumption  of  unwholesome  meats. 
In  fact,  such  dangers  are  practically  elimi- 
nated in  so  far  as  the  cattle,  hogs  and  sheep 
slaughtered  at  the  big  packing  plants  of 

the  country  are  concerned The  men 

selected  by  the  government  to  do  the  impor- 
tant work  of  meat  inspection  do  not  receive 
their  appointment  by  reason  of  any  political 
pull,  but  because  they  are  in  the  greatest 
measure  fitted  for  such  positions. 
379 


THE   PACKERS,    THE   PRIVATE 

11  Candidates  for  inspectorships  must  be 
American  citizens  who  prove  by  sworn 
statement  and  voucher  to  the  United  States 
Civil  Service  Commission  that  they  are 
physically,  mentally  and  morally  worthy  of 
the  responsibility  of  public  office.  They 
must  be  graduates  of  recognized  veterinary 
colleges,  must  have  had  at  least  three  years' 
study  of  veterinary  science,  must  pass  the 
examinations  under  Civil  Service  Commis- 
sioners and  must  stand  well  up  in  the  list  of 
passmen  to  receive  the  appointment. 

' '  Thus  is  the  public  protected  against  the 
vendors  of  meats  which  are  diseased  and 
contaminated.  It  is  one  of  the  great  advan- 
tages over  the  old  way  of  slaughtering  and 
dressing  beef,  pork,  veal  and  mutton. " 


380 


AM* 


